Tobacco and Public Health - TCSC Indonesia

4. Tobacco and its related processing machinery and equipment cannot be included
among imports financed under loans.
5. Tobacco and tobacco-related imports may be exempt from borrowers’ agreements
with the Bank to liberalize trade and reduce tariffs (Jha and Chaloupka
2000, p. 345).
Legislation of the 1980s
RUTH ROEMER 681
In the 1980s, the movement for strengthened tobacco control legislation spread
and accelerated. It was greatly encouraged by increasingly urgent resolutions
of WHO, calling for legislative action and cooperation with specialized agencies
of the United Nations (WHA 24.48), urging Member States to identify the health
problems associated with smoking in their countries and strengthen health education
on smoking (WHA 29.44), and requesting the Director General to intensify
WHO’s action to control tobacco smoking (WHA 31.56). In 1983, a report of a WHO
Expert Committee strongly backed legislation as essential to effective tobacco control.
It states:
It may be tempting to try introducing smoking control programmes without a legislative
component, in the hope that relatively inoffensive activity of this nature will placate those
concerned with public health, while generating no real opposition from cigarette manufacturers.
This approach, however, is not likely to succeed. A genuine broadly defined education
programme aimed at reducing smoking must be complemented by legislation and restrictive
measures (WHO Expert Committee 1983).
In 1986, WHO took a bold step and adopted a resolution (WHA 39.14) calling for
comprehensive tobacco control legislation. It defined such legislation as containing the
following nine elements:
1. protection from involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke in enclosed public places,
restaurants, transport, and places of work and entertainment
2. protection of children and young people from becoming addicted
3. ensuring that a good example is set in all health-related premises and by all health
personnel
4. measures towards progressive elimination of socioeconomic, behavioral, and other
incentives that maintain and promote the use of tobacco
5. prominent health warnings, including the statement that tobacco is addictive, on
all types of tobacco products
6. establishment of programs of education and public information on tobaccorelated
diseases, and effectiveness of national smoking control programs
7. monitoring trends in smoking and other forms of tobacco use, tobacco-related
diseases, and effectiveness of national smoking control action