Tobacco and Public Health - TCSC Indonesia

successful country advocates deeply understand the social and political cultures in
which they must operate.
Among the most important advocacy leadership lessons we have learned is that what
is absolutely the right strategy at one stage of tobacco control development in one
place on the Globe, may be absolutely wrong for another country at a different stage.
When Witold Zatonski almost single-handedly launched his campaign to persuade
the Polish government to enact a national advertising ban, the international experts
told him there were two immutable rules he must follow: (1) Make the corruption of
the transnational tobacco companies the central theme of your advocacy, and (2) Accept
no compromises—if your parliament is not willing to enact a total ban on advertising,
oppose their bill.
But Zatonski took the pulse of his country’s new-found freedom from Soviet dominance
and politely rejected this advice. Instead of attacking the tobacco companies, he
chose not to make industry the central theme, but to embrace the affirmative theme of
public health as a transcendent democratic value. And when, in 1995, the parliament
was prepared to enact only modest tobacco control measures—far short of a total
ad ban—he judged that such a bill would not foreclose stronger legislation later, but
would open the door for future strengthening.
And six years later, December 5, 2002, Zatonski sent out this message on GLOBALink:
It gives me great pleasure to impart to you perhaps one of the most important news for good
health of Poles. Last night I looked over Polish newspapers and magazines. I did not find any
tobacco ad. A year before (on 5th of December) tobacco ads disappeared off billboards throughout
Poland, and yesterday tobacco ads disappeared off all written mass media in our country.
Poland has become one more country free of tobacco advertising. Besides, tobacco
companies are now banned from sponsoring sports, cultural, educational, health, and
socio-political activities and events. (This included a ban on political contributions from
tobacco companies).
Then, He graciously added:
I should like to thank all our friends all over the world, who made our success possible.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you.
MICHAEL PERTSCHUK 673
Similarly, in South Africa, after the end of racial Apartheid, Health Minister Zuma
[full name] was faced with an initial tobacco control bill with little more than a series
of modest label warnings. Again, the international experts cautioned that such labels
were worse the useless.
But she and other South African advocates decided otherwise. She believed that the
passage of legislation itself and the creation of the warning labels would generate
opportunities for broad media attention to the hazards of tobacco use—and the need
for banning cigarette advertising. She was right. She reported that even illiterate smokers
noted that something had changed on the package label and demanded to know what