Indonesia’s Cigarette Culture Wars: Contesting Tobacco Regulations in the Postcolony

Abstract

This article juxtaposes representations of Indonesia’s tobacco control as temporally backwards with a counter-discourse defending its clove-laced cigarettes—called kretek—as a form of distinctive cultural heritage. These opposing discourses, which I characterize as public health evolutionism and commodity nationalism, structure clashes over Indonesian tobacco regulations. Public health evolutionism can take the form of voyeuristic, exoticizing, and Othering representations, but it can also be used to argue for more equitable access to global tobacco control knowledge and practices. Commodity nationalists insist that the kretek industry should be a source of pride rather than shame, depicting tobacco control as a neocolonial plot to destroy an indigenous industry that benefits small farmers, factory workers, and home industries. This subaltern emphasis obscures the fact that a few large companies dominate the industry, which is increasingly foreign-owned and mechanizing to increase production while reducing employment. The cigarette industry takes advantage of both discourses by marketing supposedly safer products to consumers alarmed by public health messaging, while also promoting the cigarettes-as-national-heritage narrative and undermining regulations. The stakes of these debates are high in the world’s second largest cigarette market, with over three hundred billion sticks smoked each year and more than two hundred thousand tobacco-related deaths.

Ischemic Stroke Risk Factor Profile at Prof. Dr. W. Z. Johannes Hospital, Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara

“…10 Smoking has long been associated with cultural and heritage-related habits in Indonesia. 34 According to several studies, 39.5% of Indonesians aged 15 and over are active smokers in 2016 which is 7.4% higher than the global average. 35 In this study, a high proportion of patients (52.06%) are or were active smokers.…”

How Do National Laws Filter Down to the Local? Tobacco Control Regulations and Smoke Free Areas in a Decentralised Indonesia

“…Conversely, in the Malang case, the main non-government groups that were included in the drafting process were representatives of the tobacco industry. In terms of outcomes, we can see a more tempered law that allows tobacco companies to sponsor events within SFAs – of course with caveats, but cigarette companies in Indonesia are highly experienced in subtle marketing (Welker, 2021), so this is unlikely to pose a barrier to their marketing efforts.…”