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Cigarette ads target young people
Stay healthy: Students enjoy a handball competition at the 2014 Handball Bogor Open held by the National Commission on Tobacco Control (Komnas PT) in Bogor, West Java, in October 2014
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Stay healthy: Students enjoy a handball competition at the 2014 Handball Bogor Open held by the National Commission on Tobacco Control (Komnas PT) in Bogor, West Java, in October 2014. The event campaigns for young people to avoid smoking. (Courtesy of Komnas PT via JP) (Komnas PT) in Bogor, West Java, in October 2014. The event campaigns for young people to avoid smoking. (Courtesy of Komnas PT via JP)
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span class="inline inline-center">Stay healthy: Students enjoy a handball competition at the 2014 Handball Bogor Open held by the National Commission on Tobacco Control (Komnas PT) in Bogor, West Java, in October 2014. The event campaigns for young people to avoid smoking. (Courtesy of Komnas PT)
A plan of the Jakarta administration to remove cigarette advertisements from billboards is a breakthrough in the effort to curb the growth of young smokers because nearly all cigarette ads target young smokers, an anti-tobacco activist has said.
Smoke Free Jakarta Coalition coordinator Dollaris Riauaty Suhadi said on Wednesday that teenagers were vulnerable to cigarette ads as they featured admirable figures.
'They are easily persuaded by the cool and manly appearance of the figures on cigarette billboards,' said Dollaris when attending the removal of cigarette ads from billboards in Mampang Prapatan district, South Jakarta.
The 2013 Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) data shows that more than 60 percent of smokers started the habit when under the age of 20. Meanwhile, the Global Youth Tobacco Survey data revealed a rapid increase in the prevalence of young smokers aged between 13 and 15 from 12.6 percent in 2006 to 20.3 percent in 2009.
Data from the Smoke Free Jakarta Coalition reveals there are 700 billboards display cigarette ads, many of which are in residential areas across the capital, exposing children to such ads relentlessly.
The city administration has started to remove cigarette ads from billboards, particularly those with expired permits, and will totally remove all the ads by late December because Gubernatorial Regulation No. 1/2015 on the ban on cigarette ads becomes effective in January. (bbn)
