| Montage – kids, cigs, bands and signage | Music | 00:02 |
|
| THOMPSON: It’s a Saturday night in Jakarta and a battle of the bands known as “Indiefest” is about to kick off. | 00:07 |
| Jakarta Battle of Sounds | Music | 00:14 |
|
| THOMPSON: From loud music, to bright lights, to sexy girls – the whole thing is a honey pot for the young and restless – all put on and paid for by Djarum – the cigarette company owned by Indonesia’s richest man. | 00:22 |
| LA Light cigarettes sell | THOMPSON: Tonight the in-your-face hard sell is for L.A. Lights, Djarum’s premium brand for the young and trendy. | 00:37 |
|
| Music | 00:45 |
| LA Light cigarette girls | GIRL: You want to buy my cigarette? | 00:53 |
|
| THOMPSON: The kids lap up the freebies. Lighters and sometimes cigarettes as well. | 01:02 |
| Band on stage/ Audience smokes | Music | 01:07 |
|
| THOMPSON: It’s inescapable. In this town it’s virtually impossible to find a concert or a sporting event, which isn’t sponsored by corporate tobacco. | 01:10 |
|
| MYERS: “Philip Morris is one of the most brilliant marketers in the world. | 01:24 |
| Myers. Super: | In a place like Indonesia what they’re doing is they’re making tobacco use a form of Western independence and growth. | 01:27 |
| Bands play/ Audience smokes | What’s even worse is they’re hitting the exact images that appeal to Indonesian youth. It’s the reason we’re seeing such a dramatic rise in tobacco use among the Indonesian youth.” | 01:35 |
|
| Music | 01:45 |
| Stanford. Super: | STANFORD: “I think it would be fair to characterise Indonesia as a rogue state when it comes to tobacco control.” | 01:50 |
| Audience member exhales |
| 01:54 |
| TV Advertisements | THOMPSON: When it comes to regulating tobacco, Indonesia keeps some decidedly unhealthy and unsavoury friends. Like Zimbabwe, the only other place still allowing cigarette advertising on television. And North Korea, the only other Asian nation which has not signed up to Big Tobacco’s arch enemy, the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It curbs advertising and outlaws sales to youngsters. | 02:01 |
|
| DAVID STANFORD: “Indonesia is a very large market, the third largest market for tobacco products in the world. Second, it’s got the best regulation from a company’s perspective. It’s very, very loosely regulated. You can still sell tobacco to minors. There’s no sort of pack warnings or very small pack warnings on the back of packets. The tax is low | 02:41 |
| Stanford. Super: | and it’s got a very high growth rate of young smokers. Young people are getting into smoking much more quickly, much earlier than they used to do. From a tobacco company’s perspective, Indonesia is a paradise.” | 03:00 |
| Traffic roundabout/ Fountain | THOMPSON: The marketing strategies of cigarette companies play a major role in a massive national habit. | 03:14 |
| Men smoke | Among men, almost 70% light up every day. That’s about 80 million smokers. | 03:22 |
|
| MATTHEW MYERS: “Today, the leadership of Philip Morris International and other tobacco companies, have absolutely no moral compass whatsoever. They’re willing to make as much money, killing as many people, using whatever tactics the law will allow. | 03:29 |
| Myers. Super: | It’s one of the most egregious moral and social violations of corporate responsibility that I can imagine.” | 03:47 |
| Ujang & family at home | THOMPSON: Like most, this man – Ujang Widodo – started smoking as a young teenager, blissfully ignorant of the danger to his health. | 03:54 |
|
| UJANG WIDODO: “I regret it very much now that I’m sick. Why didn’t I quit earlier? | 04:07 |
| Ujang | If I’d known I’d get this disease I would have quit a long time ago. Regret is ever present.” | 04:14 |
| Ujang – MRI – hospital | THOMPSON: Now he’s just 45 and stricken with lung cancer. He’s undergoing chemotherapy, part of the enormous and growing caseload in hospitals across the archipelago. | 04:25 |
|
| UJANG WIDODO: “My life is uncertain. I know that my days are numbered. | 04:40 |
| Ujang | I’m fighting for my life as hard as I can.” | 04:52 |
| Lung cancer patients | THOMPSON: Like anywhere else in the world, the prognosis for lung cancer is not good. Up to 400,000 Indonesians die each year from smoking related illnesses – 25,000 of them not even smokers. | 05:05 |
| Khasidoh | KHASIDOH: “The doctor said that I have to take chemotherapy, then he’ll see what happens from there. I’m optimistic that I’ll get better, I’m still young.” | 05:21 |
| Khasidoh in hospital | THOMPSON: Khasidoh is 25 years old. She has a four-month-old baby and lung cancer. She is one of the many hapless victims of Indonesia’s choking haze of second-hand cigarette smoke. | 05:37 |
| Dr Rita shows x-ray | DR RITA KHAIRANI: “This is the chest x-ray of the female patient, 25 years old. She came to us with breathlessness. She has coughs and fever and when we did the chest x-ray we found that in the right lung of this patient, a kind of mass. Then we did the CT scan of the thorax and we found a big mass in the right part of the lung. We can say the patient has lung cancer.” | 05:53 |
|
| THOMPSON: “And why does this young woman of 25 years old, why does she have lung cancer?” | 06:23 |
|
| DR RITA KHAIRANI: “I think because she was a passive smoker. Her father and her brother smoked in the home.” | 06:29 |
| Khasidoh in hospital | KHASIDOH: “Sometimes I feel angry… upset. Sometimes I feel resentful. Well, we can’t tell people what to do or what not to do.” | 06:44 |
|
| THOMPSON: “Do you think that too many people smoke in Indonesia? Do you have an opinion about that?” KHASIDOH: “Many. Too many smokers in Indonesia.” | 07:05 |
| Hospital patients | THOMPSON: Most lung cancer goes undiagnosed in Indonesia. Those few who do make it to hospital are usually past the point of no return. Khasidoh is relatively young and feeling positive. She wants to survive for the sake of her baby. We’ll monitor her battle with this insidious illness. | 07:17 |
|
| Music | 07:48 |
| People on street/Smokers | THOMPSON: A key reason for the smoking’s decline has been that these days the habit burns a real hole in your pocket, but here in Indonesia smokes remain very, very cheap. A packet like this will cost you about a dollar and home made brands in rural areas can sell for a quarter of that. That’s because in this country, taxes on cigarettes are among the lowest in the world. | 07:59 |
| Travelling sequence | Music | 08:22 |
|
| THOMPSON: To find out why, we travelled into the archipelago’s own Marlboro Country, out in East Java where kretek is king, Indonesia’s pungent clove cigarette. | 08:31 |
| Tobacco plantations | These are Indonesia’s killing fields, taking more lives every year than Aceh’s devastating tsunami. | 08:43 |
|
| But even among many Indonesian tobacco farmers, there’s either breathtaking ignorance or stubborn denial. | 08:55 |
| Tobacco farming family | We meet Abdul Hadi who says he doesn’t believe a lifetime’s habit has been detrimental to his health. | 09:04 |
|
| ABDUL HADI: “I smoke for 30 years. I stopped because I had breathing problems.” THOMPSON: “How did smoking for 30 years affect your health?” | 09:12 |
|
| ABDUL HADI: “No effect… all the same. It’s fine.” THOMPSON: Certainly, Abdul’s wife | 09:25 |
| Kholifah | Kholifah remains oblivious to the dangers of smoking. KHOLIFAH: “Smoking doesn’t really make people sick. He had difficulties breathing, so he stopped smoking. Cigarettes don’t cause any illness.” | 09:30 |
| Son smoking | THOMPSON: And Kholifah is unperturbed that her teenage son is already a seasoned smoker. | 09:50 |
|
| KHOLIIFAH: “It’s fine that he smokes. Indonesians think men who smoke look more masculine.” | 09:56 |
| Son | ABDI MANAF: “For me personally it’s good, because I can calm myself down with it. If I don’t smoke, my mind gets all complicated.” | 10:06 |
| Cleric presiding over prayers | THOMPSON: In the world’s most populous Muslim nation you’d think an edict from the country’s top council of Islamic scholars, the MUI, would count for something. Recently it considered declaring a fatwa on smoking as being “haram” or “forbidden”. One of the nation’s religious leaders, Cholil Ridwan, believes smoking is evil. | 10:23 |
|
| CHOLIL RIDWAN: “Cigarettes are like a weapon of mass destruction - | 10:48 |
| Cholil Ridwan | like a biological or chemical weapon that can wipe out a whole nation if they all smoke.” | 10:54 |
| Pro-tobacco rally | PROTEST RALLY: “Who ever gets in our way, who ever is against us, who ever they are, we must fight back!” | 11:02 |
|
| THOMPSON: At this farmers’ rally in central Java, tobacco triumphs over theology. A giant cigarette is inscribed with the words “Cigarettes are not poison”. The banner behind reads, “Revoke the MUI edict. It’s amoral, barbaric.” In the end the MUI decided that it’s only children and pregnant women who are forbidden to smoke. Even that was enough to provoke a life or death response from Java’s tobacco farmers. | 11:19 |
|
| PROTEST RALLY: “Are you all ready to die?” CROWD: “Yeah!” | 11:52 |
| Tobacco factory. Making Kretek | Music | 11:57 |
|
| THOMPSON: Pressure from the tobacco industry has successfully kept the government from raising cigarette taxes. | 12:04 |
|
| The hand rolling of kreteks is a frenzied display of human dexterity. These have twice the nicotine and three times the tar of regular cigarettes. Kreteks account for 90% of the hundreds of billions of cigarettes sold in Indonesia each year. | 12:14 |
|
| Music | 12:36 |
|
| THOMPSON: And because they rely on manual labour, hand-rolled kreteks are taxed much less than their machine-made competitors. The margins are very profitable and very attractive to companies like Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. Their biggest sellers here are hand-rolled kreteks. | 12:46 |
|
| Even small local producers like Syamsudi, know when they’re on to a good thing. | 13:05 |
| Syamsudi – local kretek producer | SYAMSUDI: “The increase is very, very good. Annually, the increase is between 20 and 25 per cent.” | 13:16 |
| Kretek factory. Shredding tobacco | THOMPSON: The Indonesian Government talks about future tax increases, but for now it’s happy to sit on its hands while more and more Indonesian smokers send themselves to an early grave. | 13:27 |
| Khasidoh in hospital | It’s an argument lost on Khasidoh, the young passive smoke victim fighting lung cancer. When we revisited her in hospital, she was still awaiting her chemotherapy treatment. | 13:44 |
|
| KHASIDOH: “I feel a bit better now, but not good enough for chemotherapy yet.” | 13:59 |
|
| THOMPSON: “How do you feel about being away from your baby?” KHASIDOH: “I feel sad. I really miss him a lot. This is my first child. I want to be with him all the time.” | 14:07 |
|
| THOMPSON: “When do you think you will see him again?” KHASIDOH: “After chemotherapy, the doctor said I can go home.” | 14:32 |
| Khasidoh’s mother and baby and smokers at shop |
| 14:41 |
|
| THOMPSON: In the meantime, her little boy is being cared for by his grandmother, who sells cigarettes for a living. When Khasidoh gave birth four months ago, her husband left her because he could no longer afford the medical bills. | 14:44 |
|
| KHASIDOH’S MOTHER: “I hope she gets better. I want her to heal. God will make her better again, just maybe. She is my daughter – I want her to get better.” | 14:59 |
|
| THOMPSON: She tells us Khasidoh was brought up not only by her smoking father, but by a grandfather who was a heavy smoker. But like so many here, there’s denial about the effects of tobacco. She doesn’t believe her daughter is sick because she was surrounded by smokers. | 15:13 |
| Khasidoh’s mother | “How did the grandfather die?” KHASIDOH’S MOTHER: “He was sick. He coughed a lot. The doctor said that he had lung sickness, but he seemed healthy, he ate well…just coughed a lot.” | 15:33 |
| Montage of smokers, including children | Music | 15:52 |
|
| THOMPSON: As thousands of Indonesians perish each week, tobacco companies prosper. After all here is a market place with next at no regulatory hurdles. | 15:59 |
| Cigarette billboards | For Big Tobacco, under siege in the shrinking markets of the developed world, this is a golden opportunity for growth. The big players are swooping in for the kill. | 16:13 |
|
| This year British American Tobacco, the makers of Lucky Strike, paid more than 600 million dollars for a majority stake in Bentoel, a smaller Indonesian tobacco company. | 16:25 |
|
| Sampoerna is one of Indonesia’s big three tobacco giants. It was bought in 2005 by the world’s largest tobacco corporation, Philip Morris International, the creators of Marlboro and the Marlboro Man. Over the years, Sampoerna’s products could be credited with millions of premature deaths. | 6:38 |
| Philip Morris press conference Jakarta | The new chief of Philip Morris in Indonesia is old enough to remember when the Marlboro Man commercials screened on television and in cinemas in his home country. He’s a Brit who headed up the company’s operations in Australia. He refused our request for an interview but we caught up with him at a shareholders forum. | 17:06 |
| Gledhill at shareholders’ forum | (TO GLEDHILL) “Your products continue to be promoted and advertised at music events, sporting events, cultural events. Look it’s pretty clear despite often denials that the sort of marketing is aimed at younger smokers. Now given that you are from Australia, you know the reality of what tobacco does to people, on a personal level how is your conscience?” | 17:33 |
| Super: | GLEDHILL: “On a personal level my conscience if fine actually. I work for a company which I believe not only follows the law by the letter but also in the spirit as well.” | 17:57 |
| Documents on screen | Music | 18:07 |
|
| THOMPSON: Internal Philip Morris documents reveal that the company is very focused on enticing young Indonesians to sample their deadly wares. | 18:13 |
|
| Philip Morris’ documents refer to its A – Mild brand of kretek cigarettes as the “Aspirational brand for young adult smokers”. The documents say the company’s marketing goal is to generate trial and repurchase, that is, to get the young hooked on their product. | 18:28 |
| Gledhill at shareholders’ forum | (TO GLEDHILL) “Just to be clear, are you saying that your advertisements and promotions, which are all about musical and sporting events, are not trying to attract young smokers?” | 18:49 |
| Super: | JOHN GLEDHILL: Our advertising, which is not just in music by the way, is aimed at smokers, and is aimed as persuading existing smokers to switch from competitors’ brands into our own brands. That’s the aim of our advertising.” | 19:03 |
| Documents on screen | MATTHEW MYERS: “Philip Morris has no credibility when it argues that all it’s trying to do is switching adult smokers from one brand to another. It’s | 19:19 |
| Myers. Super: | exactly the same lie they told in the United States and in other countries until their own documents exposed that that simply isn’t the case.” | 19:28 |
| Montage of cigarettes/smokers | Music | 19:37 |
|
| THOMPSON: Against the enormous momentum of the marketing push, there are meagre, haphazard attempts to rein in smoking. Some local governments have banned smoking in public places, but enforcement is a half-hearted affair. | 19:42 |
| Smoking parliamentarians | Indonesian politicians don’t even obey the laws they do put in place. Smoking is banned in the nation’s parliament building, but every day parliamentarians are lighting up inside. | 19:56 |
|
| Music | 20:13 |
| Supari at press conference | THOMPSON: Indonesia’s Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, is not afraid to making controversial statements. She’s best known for suggesting that the United States might be using Indonesia’s strain of the bird flu virus to develop new biological weapons. | 20:26 |
|
| [to Supari] “You don’t think smoking kills people?” THOMPSON: But she wasn’t happy to be asked about smoking. | 20:42 |
|
| SITI FADILAH SUPARI: “Don’t ask about smoking.” | 20:46 |
|
| THOMPSON: “Why not? It’s killing hundreds of thousands of Indonesians every year.” SITI FADILAH SUPARI: “I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready for that.” | 20:48 |
|
| THOMPSON: It’s difficult to know what to make of Health Minister Supari’s explanation for not signing up to the World Health Organisation’s treaty which would make life much more difficult for Big Tobacco here. She says it’s “too late” for Indonesia to sign. | 20:54 |
|
| “Do you know what the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is?” SITI FADILAH SUPARI: “Yes I know. FCTC. Ask my staff…” THOMPSON: “Why doesn’t Indonesia sign it? You’re the Health Minister, why doesn’t Indonesia sign it?” SITI FADILAH SUPARI: [walks off] “It’s already too late.” | 21:10 |
| Khasidoh’s wedding photo | Music | 21:27 |
|
| THOMPSON: It certainly is too late for Khasidoh. She never did see her baby boy again. | 21:30 |
| Khasidoh in coffin | She died just two days after we last spoke to her in hospital. | 21:41 |
| Khasidoh’s funeral | But even as Khasidoh’s friends and family gather to mourn her passing, they’re still reluctant to accept that tobacco is a killer. But some are learning - if a little too late. As Atib Sajid lays his daughter to rest, he bemoans his addiction to a thirty-year-old habit. | 21:46 |
|
| ATIB SAJID: “I regret what happened, but what else can I do? What has happened has happened. What I can do is smoke less.” | 22:11 |
|
| KHASIDOH’S MOTHER: “I thought she would be healthy again. I really thought she was about to get better. I never thought of her dying so soon.” | 22:23 |
|
| THOMPSON: Khasidoh’s death is a grim reminder that over the next five years the families of at least two million Indonesians will lose loved ones before their time – to diseases caused by smoking. The deadly dilemma for Indonesia is how much longer it puts tobacco industry profits before the health of its people. | 22:47 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Geoff Thompson Camera: David Anderson Research: Ake Prihantari Ari Wuryantama Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen Producer: Ian Altschwager | 23:15 |