Indonesia Needs New Breakthrough to Reduce Smoking Prevalence

english.jpnn.com, JAKARTA - Adult smokers in Indonesia have considerably increased during these past 10 years.

The government is advised to adopt a new approach of lowering the prevalence by encouraging people to use alternative tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, and nicotine bags, through special regulations.
 
Based on the 2021 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) results, released by the Ministry of Health in June 2022, over these past 10 years there has been an increment in the number of adult smokers by 8.8 million people.

In 2011, there was around 60.3 million of smokers, then increased to 69.1 million in 2021. The survey involved 9,156 respondents.

In responding to the findings, the Director of the Centre of Youth and Population Research (CYPR), Dedek Prayudi, explained, the government's failure in reducing the prevalence of smoking due to the difficulty supporting the alternative tobacco products use.

In fact, according to him, the product has applied the harm reduction concept so that it has a much lower risk than cigarettes, as has been proven in various scientific studies from within and outside the country.

“If the alternative tobacco products can be properly and appropriately regulated, then these products can be an additional solution to overcome the prevalence of smoking. Unfortunately, the Indonesian government has not planned or formulated regulations for alternative tobacco products specifically,” said Dedek, on Tuesday (4/10).

The Indonesian government, Dedek explained, should be able to follow the steps of UK, New Zealand, and Japan which have succeeded to reduce the prevalence of smoking thanks to the use of alternative tobacco products.

In fact, those countries have regulated the utilization of such products.