Most Indonesians support moves to ban tobacco advertisements..

July 14, 2008 - About 88 percent of the 1,200 people surveyed in eight cities on Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi islands said the country should ban the advertisements and join the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Indonesia, the world's fifth-largest tobacco market, is the only nation in Asia which has not signed or ratified the the FCTC - a global anti-tobacco treaty. Limited restrictions on advertising or sales to young people (as young as 5)have helped H.M. Sampoerna, Philip Morris International (PMI) Inc.'s local unit (Altria paid about $5 billion to acquire a 97 percent stake in Sampoerna in 2005 - PMI spinoff from Altria) and PT Gudang Garam become Asia's second-and third-biggest cigarette producers. Market share first-quarter 2008, Clove-flavored cigarettes, known as kretek, dominate sales in this Southeast Asian nation. These cigarettes account for about 90 percent of the cigarettes sold each year in Indonesia, according to Gappri, an industry association, which estimates that 141 million of the country's 238 million people are smokers.

Kretek cigarettes contain large amounts of both tar (30mg) and nicotine (1.8mg). PMI introduced the clove-flavored, filtered Marlboro Mix 9 in July, 2007. (Leo Burnett, a unit of Publicis Groupe SA, the world's fourth-biggest advertising firm, will help market this product.) In 2007 the government expected to receive 42 trillion rupiah, or $4.75 billion (6% of revenue), of taxes from cigarette production and sales this year, said Anwar Suprijadi, the Finance Ministry's director general for customs and excise. The Indonesian tobacco industry supports 600,000 workers and 3.5 million tobacco and clove farmers, according to the Cigarette Producers Union in Jakarta. (An unwitting endorsement for Indonesian tobacco by Arijit Ghosh and Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja, Bloomberg News, 6/6/2007) Primary Reference: Most Indonesians Say Tobacco Ads Should Be Banned, Survey Finds by Arijit Ghosh and Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja, Bloomberg News, 7/8/2008. Related news briefs: May, 13, 2008, January 29, 2008, July 21, 2007 and June 18, 2007. Click on image to enlarge..