The Possibility of Quit Smoking

Posted on August 29, 2007
Filed Under Indonesia

To commemorate the Quit Smoking Day on May 31, Priyadi, an Indonesian blogger, calls for all Indonesian bloggers to make three statement to quit smoking. In India, the government has decided to put the skull and cross-bone in every cigarette packs as obligatory.

Is the Priyadi’s calling and the Indian gov. new rules will stop smokers from smoking and polluting the environment? Unlikely. Unless and until the government take a comprehensive decision which includes the total close-down of cigarette companies and the plantation of tobacco.

Smokers movement has been limited a lot. In India like in some other countries in the West you cannot smoke in public places and inside/outside airport, so the rules. The facts are cigarette still sold everywhere. It’s like a mother prohibit her 10-year-old kid to eat cookies and at the same time put it in front of him/her. Well, a cigarette addict is a kid in its matured form.

Having a chain smokers myself, and been through success-and-fail try to quit, my five suggestion to government if they are serious enough to banish smoking habit from Indonesian people–because I strongly believe, only the gov. has the power and capacity to make a quit smoking campaign’s not merely a joke–are as follows:

1. Close the cigarette companies;
2. Stop farmers from planting tobacco;
3. Stop clove farmers (because Indonesian cigarette blended with clove).
4. Smoking as criminal offence
5. All four prohibition are non bailable offences.

What do you think?