Warnings have graphic effect on market

Graphic health warnings that were applied to cigarette packs from June are already starting to take their toll on sales in Indonesia, according to a story in The Jakarta Post.

Muhammad Guntur, the owner of the Janur Kuning cigarette factory in Kudus, Central Java, was quoted as saying that his cigarette sales had fallen by 10 percent since the government regulation requiring the inclusion of pictorial health warnings had come into force.

He put the decline down to consumers’ discomfort at seeing the images of cigarette-caused health problems.

Consumers, he added, had tended to shift to lower-quality cigarettes, which were exempt from pictorial-warning requirements.

But Guntur doesn’t think that smokers will be put off for long. “We are sure that such a decline is temporary in nature because smokers will eventually get used to seeing such horrible images,” he said.

Cigarette manufacturers have been given until August 24 fully to implement the pictorial-warning requirement.