Mega Vows to Help Tobacco Industry

Source from:  Jakarta Globe 07/15/2009

Presidential candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri on Friday promised to help tobacco farmers and the cigarette industry make the transition to work with other crops and products if she is elected president. Speaking at a lunch meeting with the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, Megawati said that smoking bans posed a serious dilemma for Indonesia as millions of farmers and workers depended on the tobacco industry. For Megawati, the issue was not whether or not to endorse a policy to ban cigarettes, but rather "how to make tobacco farmers plant other types of crops that could also benefit them," and how to get the industry to work with other products. Kartono Muhamad, from the Tobacco Control Support Center, said that Megawati was on the wrong path. "The policy she mentioned was directed at the wrong issue. It won't solve the problem." He said the best solution to reduce cigarette consumption was by increasing taxes and banning advertisements aimed at youngsters. More than 85 percent of the tobacco for locally produced cigarettes is imported, therefore a tax increase would be shouldered by importers and not local farmers, he said. "There's no problem with growing the same amount of tobacco," he said. Enditem