THE FAG END OF IMMORAL BUSINESS

Don’t quit – we’re addicted to your suffering  

                             

Cancer wards in Indonesia should have special visitor viewing areas. Like club boxes at sporting events, the spectators would watch the count-down while the watched gasp their way to the siren.

These observatories will be solely for VIPs – Very Immoral People. This group includes tobacco company executives and their advertising agents. In the country next door they work in a barely regulated market, vigorously promoting a product which they know kills, cripples and impoverishes.

According to Australian cancer clinics, smoking more than doubles the chances of a heart attack or stroke; it’s responsible for 85 per cent of lung cancers.  This isn’t fake news – it’s science scripture.

Getting the VIPs to witness their customers’ agonies might be difficult.  Even if attendance was compulsory these guys are seriously rich; in Indonesia they’d buy their way out of any obligation.

Indonesia is one of just eight countries that’s neither a signatory nor a party to the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.  That puts the Republic way offside with the 180 states which ban or limit ads promoting smoking.

East Java is the heartland of tobacco production and Malang is at the centre.  There’s a cigarette factory directly opposite a Dutch era church and the town square. Even the banks don’t enjoy such a prestigious position.

Malang is also an education city supporting 28 tertiary institutions. Two of the biggest, the Universities of Malang and Brawijaya (around 30,000 students each) plus high schools spill their young learners onto a major road leading to the CBD.

At the first traffic lights they’re confronted by a giant billboard.  It reads in English: NEVER QUIT.  So they don’t.

More than 67 per cent of males over 15 smoke according to Indonesia’s Health Ministry. (The good news is that only three per cent of adult women are users.)

The Ministry predicts that unless serious attempts are made to butt-out the nation will lead the world in smokers by 2030. At the moment it’s number four after China, Russia and the US. While these countries are nudging public health ahead of tobacco company profits, Indonesian firms plan to double output.

That means building a market as the addicts wheeze away at a rate of around 400,000 a year.  So the kids need an introduction to Lady Nicotine who’ll mask facts with fantasies.  

What do lads want?  Fun times, macho adventure, staunch mates and gorgeous girlfriends.  Available for the rich, but few are so lucky.  The rest are puffing to find ‘satisfaction’, to ‘be bold’, become part of the ‘new generation’ and ‘get ahead’. 

That’s what the ads say – and not just in words.  Pictures show the healthiest and happiest youngsters any nation would be proud to display at the Olympics.  Marketing isn’t supposed to target minors so the agencies use adult models with teen features dancing, leaping, singing – all the things coughers can’t do.

Close to 30 million Indonesians live on less than US $25 a month according to the Statistics Agency. Fags are the second biggest household expense after rice.

There’s a price war currently underway with pack contents changing to suit all pockets.  A dozen for Rp 11,000 (an ash-flick above an Aussie dollar) from one brand, with a rival offering 16 for Rp 13,000.  You can’t buy a litre of milk for that money.

The wraps have small health warnings but not the plain packaging introduced in Australia and unsuccessfully challenged by Indonesia in the World Trade Organisation.

Excise on tobacco is just under half the base price though the WHO recommends more than two-thirds. The duties make up between ten and 12 per cent of the national budget.

The government is suffering a massive shortfall in revenue.  An amnesty to persuade citizens to declare money parked overseas scored US $365 billion. The target was five times higher.

 So ramping taxes on smokes could boost the health budget – currently three per cent of GDP and three times less than the OECD average.

But the manufacturers are a powerful lobby able to make reforms disappear in a puff of smoke. .

The big three are Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna (owned by the US company Philip Morris), Gudang Garam and the Djarum Group.  To sanitise their sickening trade the companies sponsor scholarships, sporting events and pop concerts. 

The ad guys they hire have refined ways to by-pass prohibitions on showing cigarettes by picturing stacks of white coffee cups with the top one frothing.  ‘Mild’ is banned, so they call one product MLD, with the vertical stroke on the second letter highlighted.  Health warnings on TV ads flash so fast they’re illegible.

Some NEVER QUIT signs feature a sweating body builder (the sort who’d never smoke) or master craftsman, so any other interpretations of the message must be malicious misreadings.

There’s no doubt the industry is full of smarties. I once lodged for a month in the Malang home of a fine family where dad was a senior staffer with Rothmans and a good provider.  He never smoked and cautioned his kids against starting. 

But I reckon he should still take a turn in the cancer ward observation room.

First published in On Line Opinion, 21 August 2017:  See

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19235

WELCOME TO INDONESIA: PLEASE SMOKE

First impressions count most Duncan Graham

The reflections of foreigners arriving in Indonesia are now part of the nation’s stock of timeworn clichés.

Being mugged by humidity as you exit the plane, asphyxiated by the spice of burning cloves, stung by the acrid tang of hot oil from roadside fry-ups, choked by the endless fug of exhaust fumes.

It was like that in the old days before aerobridges, indoor smoking bans and air-conditioned taxis with tinted windows. You either loved it and stayed - or threw up and never returned. Now the first impressions are no longer olfactory – they’re visual.

It’s a toss up between the airport crowds and the abundance of cigarette adverts as to which dominates. Both make Indonesia a distinctive destination quite unlike any other.

Unless a victorious sporting team has arrived from conquests overseas, security guards at Western airport arrival gates outnumber greeters. Just the odd spouse (and some even ones too), a business partner or company car driver and that’s the welcome party.

Not so in Indonesia. Elsewhere flying is as ho-hum as catching a bus, but here it’s still a major event. So the extended family, friends, kampong – sometimes the whole village - have to be there to celebrate the return of the rover.

The crowds come even when the traveller has only been next door to Malaysia for a short stint of babysitting or construction work.

(It would be churlish to suggest they’re all there to claim a share of the souvenirs that Indonesians returning from abroad must carry.)

With such enormous receptions who wouldn’t feel wanted? Forget the temperature of the weather – this is real human warmth. No one turns on such shows for expat individualists; we just dart out alone to the cab rank, head down, trying not to show our envy.

So far, so good. When Mohammed Nuh, the acting Culture and Tourism Minister was giving out a top toilet award to Surabaya’s new – though already overcrowded - Juanda airport terminal, he reportedly commented that loved lavatories ‘enhance the image of national culture.’

While it might be better to judge Indonesian culture on more esoteric levels, a clean cubicle does help give a good impression on entering a country. If issues at the bottom end of society are treated seriously, then the top end must be splendid.

If only. Such expectations are rapidly flushed away as you hit the highway and a screaming streetscape of advertising for just one product.

Hollywood toga movies featuring classical Rome always include a long shot of a banner-bedecked avenue, an essential triumphal entrance for the victor.

In modern Indonesia the flags and posters flanking Juanda’s roads are for the losers. They look bright. The captions are smart and sometimes funny. But the reality is funereal.

Not mild.

These adverts suggest a healthy country life but lure millions into addictions and disease. This includes the estimated 500,000 Indonesians who will suffer ghastly deaths from cancers of the lung and other vulnerable organs this year, but who are unreliably informed that using the weed will ensure a jolly life, making them slim, sophisticated and popular.

It’s not just Australia and European Union nations that have long-banned tobacco advertising; so has Singapore, Malaysia and almost 170 other countries. Which makes Indonesia a standout exception, and an airport entrance celebrating nicotine a rare international experience.

Is this the ‘national culture’ Minister Nuh wants to promote? This magic and mysterious country has so many world-class products, like batik, original artwork, imaginative handicrafts and fine furniture made from sustainable materials that could be advertised with pride at the international gateways.

And not just goods. There are many awesome attractions in Java, an island so rich in accessible history that other nations salivate with jealousy. How about higher education? Rough in the past but getting better now, with the smarter universities upgrading staff, curricula and facilities and bidding for overseas students.

So what message is the government allowing the tobacco companies to give visitors? There’s only one conclusion: This is an administration that cares for airport hygiene but not for its people’s health.

(First published in The Sunday Post 18 October 09)
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