Observers Consider It Not Easy To Divert Tobacco Farmers To Plant Food Materials

UNSPLASH ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - Segara Research Institute Executive Director Piter Abdullah said it was not easy to make tobacco farmers plant other commodities. He conveyed this in response to the discourse of including these plants in categories similar to other addictive substances such as narcotics in the Health Omnibus Bill.

"Changing tobacco plantations into food plantations will not have an impact on national food production if the farmers themselves are decreasing," Piter said in a written statement, Wednesday, May 31.

Strengthening Piter's statement, Sahminuddin, who is a tobacco farmer in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), said that his work had become a culture that had been passed down for a long time. Thus, replacing commodities for cultivation is not easy.

"Our land is only suitable for tobacco plants," said Sahminuddin.

Sahminuddin said that tobacco is of higher value than other plantation commodities. "Then if this problem wants to be replaced, it cannot be replaced immediately. If they are asked to be transferred to other commodities, is there a market guarantee," he said.

In the draft of the Health Bill in Article 154 Paragraph 3, tobacco processing results are valued on narcotics and psychotropic substances. Other addictive substances are also mentioned, narcotics, psychotropic substances, and alcoholic beverages.

The following is the article:

"The addictive zat as referred to in paragraph (2) can be in the form of: (a). narcotics; (b). psychotropic; (c). alcoholic beverages; (d). tobacco products; and (e) other addictive substances processing results."

While in Paragraph 6 it is stated, "The results of tobacco as referred to in paragraph (3) letter d can be in the form of: a. cigarettes; b. cigars; c. leaf cigarettes; d. slice tobacco; and e. solid and liquid tobacco used for e-cigarettes."