
Smoking: A growing crisis among Indonesia’s Youth
Updated: Apr 1, 2021
In a perfect world, it would be highly odd and perhaps even confusing, if you see a 5-year-old smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, even before he can speak properly. Our beautifully conditioned mind would not even consider this as a possibility and rightly so. ‘Who, in their right mind, would let a five- year- old smoke, let alone near a cigarette?’ As bizarre as it may sound, this is the reality of millions of Indonesian children, who learn how to light a cigarette, even before they learn to write their alphabets. In more rural parts of the country, if you’d ask a child what his hobbies were, football and smoking cigarettes would be among the top two. This epidemic that has engulfed Indonesia, is not just sheer neglect on the part of the parents but is also fuelled by some of the biggest cigarette companies in the world.
Indonesia, with the fourth largest population in the world, is one of the largest cigarette market, second to China. Tobacco has been one of Indonesia’s largest industry for decades and contributes to nearly 95% of the state's excise total. According to Bloomberg, the country seeks to earn $12 million in state revenue in the year 2021, which is 5% higher than in 2020. In 2016 alone the country produced about 340 million cigarettes. This island nation produces tobacco for the largest tobacco giants. With the tobacco industry pumping millions of dollars in a developing nation, the government’s will to regulate the tobacco market is highly questionable.
While the parliament has chosen to value the national revenue more than public health, tobacco giants across the world have not spared the chance of exploiting the laws and entering the country to make millions. There is an uncanny resemblance between colonialism in India a century ago and the crisis that Indonesia faces today.

Young, naïve minds and not the most sought-after advertisements, are not the ideal combination but it makes for a fool-proof recipe for cigarette companies to cash billions. Local cigarettes can cost as less as 6 Indian rupees and with no supervision, children have easy access to them. The habit of smoking is not the only issue at hand; hundreds of children become prone to acute nicotine poisoning as a result of working at tobacco farms. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that more than 1.5 million children, ages 10 to 17, work in agriculture in Indonesia. Statistics show that children leave school before 15 years of age (minimum compulsory schooling age in Indonesia) in order to support their families. With very little to live on and tobacco harvesting being one of the largest sources of income, , labour laws and health issues lose their meaning in the more rural parts of the country and the dominant human needs of money and food, take the primary position. In the simplest economic sense, when the income of people working on tobacco farms is barely sufficient to meet their daily needs, expenditure on cigarettes, that too by young children, crowds out the income available for other needs of the family.
In such situations, policymakers often find themselves struggling to impose regulations. For Indonesia, these tobacco companies mean high revenue and are the nation’s most important sector, just like finance is for the United States or Agriculture in India. The Indonesian cigarette market is dominated by 5 major players, a mini cartel if you’d please, with HM Sampoerna being the biggest player with a 92.5% share owned by Phillips Morris International, the makers of the infamous Marlboro cigarettes, commanding a whopping 29% market share. A substantial market share is also owned by top Indonesian conglomerates like Gudang Garam, famous for kerek or clove cigarettes. These companies not only command power over the tobacco industry in Indonesia but also yield significant political power and connections as well (refer to the pie chart below). With financial power in one hand and ties with top offices of a developing country, these companies are a force to reckon with. While they claim to promote mindful smoking practices and deny resorting to any unlawful practices, statistics do not seem to support this claim.
