Cigarette and Economy of Indonesia

 Nowadays, cigarette has been something can not be separated from the people's lives in Indonesia. Almost each level of ages consuming the cigarette. Start from kids,  junior-senior high school students (teenagers), adults, up to the eldest. The same with the levels of the social life, each level (low, middle, high) consuming the cigarette. We can also see frequency of consuming the cigarette in  our society on various type of job, for example labors, drivers, salesmans, employees, businessmans, officials, and others, many of them are consumer. Even now, gender has become something not important anymore, each woman feel free to smoke anywhere or anywhen they want.

The number of smokers in Indonesia continue to increase from 1995 until now. As many as 34.7 million to 65 million smokers. It is based on data from the National Social- Economy Survey and Health Research Association. "Based gender in 1995 there were an estimated 33.8 million male smokers and 1.1 million female smokers. However, in 2007 this figure rose dramatically to 60.4 million male smokers and 4.8 million female smokers, "said UI Demographic Research Institute, Abdillah Hassan. Increase also occurred in consuming cigarettes among teenagers, where in 1995 only 7 percent and then 12 years later increased to 19 percent. This drastic increase proves how effective tobacco industry strategies and how weak the government in protecting teens from smoking.

This is a big problem and we should not ignore it. We can see there are many things happened caused by this, most of them are bad things. The one that we can clearly see is problems on health, cigarette ruin health so much. But besides ruin the health, some said that cigarette give a good impact in economy of Indonesia, they said that Indonesia’s economy quite dependent on cigarette industry, it is because cigarette industry contribute a large amount to the foreign exchange and Indonesia’s APBN. Government decision which made cigarette industry become one of the big parts to contribute in Indonesia’s APBN make cigarette industry become more passionate to promote and to sell their product to the society in Indonesia. Based on data from the Demographic Institute Faculty of Economics UI, production of 220 billion sticks of cigarettes (2006) has increase to 270 billion cigarettes (2010). If the price per stem Rp 500, Rp 135 trillion burned by Indonesia’s smokers a year. So then it will become harder to prevent the development of this industry in our country.

As an industry, there are many things needed to make this industry going well, one of them is the raw materials like the tobaccos. This needs automatically provide an employment for the society to tobacco farmings, which then help to increase the economy of the society. Not only help the farmers of tobacco, there are many people survive because of the benefits of cigarette, such as tobacco companies, cigarette factory workers, selling cigarettes as well as people who sell services to the cigarette manufacturer. Cigarette has a big role in the low level of society, we can see there are so many of them such as the vendors selling the cigarette on the street as their way to keep alive. Many people helped by selling cigarette. This situation made the government do not dare to stop the development of cigarette industry in Indonesia, because they think it will cause a big impact for the economy. And all of this things become their reasons why Indonesia’s economy need cigarette industry.

Even tough many people said that cigarette industry has a great contribution in our economy there are still many reasons come to againts. Cigarette actually contributes the greatest loss to our country. Losses incurred cigarettes is not only a health problem but also a problem of moral and financial. Loss will be felt in the next dozen years, there will be the ‘lost generation’. Because actually smoking really damaging the youth. We lost too much productivity, too many productive generation. The state will lost their youth which one day could be the one who build this country to be the better one. According to data of Ministry of Health in 2004, the total cost of consumption or expenditure to Rp 127.4 trillion tobacco. Cost are inclusive of the cost of health cares, treatments and deaths from tobacco. Meanwhile, state revenues from tobacco tax was Rp 16.5 trillion. "It means expenses for handling health problems caused by smoking  7.5 times more than the cigarette tax revenues itself”. It can be seen that the cigarette industry is not the industry that can significantly improve the life of the people in Indonesia. Even the growth of the tobacco industry must be paid by the people of Indonesia, consumer of cigarettes is too much suffering in almost every aspect.

From the study conducted by the Institute of Demography (LD UI) in 2007, showed that the tobacco industry contributed only 1 percent of the total national output and ranks 34th. While the contribution of the employment in the same year (2007), the tobacco industry ranks only 48th, while tobacco farming was ranked 30th among the 66 sectors. We must have the courage to admit that Indonesia is far behind in the effort to protect people against the effects of cigarette’s smoke. Compared with neighboring countries in the ASEAN region, such as Thailand, Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia. In these countries, several regulatory instruments have been created to overcome these adverse effects of tobacco products. Such as that contained in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), with an increase in cigarette taxes, prohibit tobacco advertising and the 100 percent smoke-free society that aims to protect non-smokers. Moreover, in these countries are already implementing health warning which is not only just a form of writing, but also by using the graph or picture of health effects of cigarettes in each pack.

So, in terms of profits, income country by the production of cigarettes is very large but equal to the expenditures because customs are quite large. Benefits of smoking only on manufacturers that produce cigarettes. Of course, also for the workers and laborers associated with the manufacture of cigarettes. Because of cigarettes they can achieve great benefits and can survive. As with the users, especially teenagers and parents who consume the majority of cigarettes every day, until there are so many heavy smokers around us, smoking can damage our health because of the chemical elements contained in. So, if the government was intending to protect citizens from the effects of smoking, they need to take a real action, stop protect the cigarette industry in our country, stop make an excuse that said Indonesia really depend on this industry. In addition, the government also should immediately discuss the effects of Tobacco Control Bill into law, so the legal aspects of tobacco’s control is getting stronger. The impact of tobacco control regulation will not necessarily reduce the consumption of cigarettes because cigarettes are addictive. But at least this accession will protect children, young people, women, pregnant women, the prospective novice smokers and non-smokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke.

Source 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/99783107/Analisis-Keuntungan-Dan-Kerugian-Rokok-Bagi-Indonesia

http://nusantaranews.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/mitos-industri-rokok-penting-bagi-negara/ 

Writer :
Name : Siti Afifah
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