Child Smokers Increase, Lantern Foundation Hopes To Create A Protective Legal Umbrella

Cigarette butt illustration. (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - The head of the Lentera Anak Foundation, Lisda Sundari, hopes that the state will provide protection in the form of a legal umbrella to protect children from exposure to cigarettes.

This was conveyed by Lisda in the 2022 National Children's Day webinar entitled "Is the Government Still Committed to Reducing the Prevalence of Child Smokers to Achieve the 2020-2024 RPJMN Target?"

"We hope that one form of protection for the state is to provide a regulatory umbrella, a legal umbrella so that we can support efforts to protect our children," he said, Thursday, July 28.

He explained, the number of child smokers in the last five to 10 years has increased.

"We are holding this discussion because we are concerned about the number of child smokers, which has increased in the past five to 10 years," he said, according to Antara.

In fact, according to him, the government is targeting to reduce the prevalence of smoking at the age of children and adolescents in the 2020-2024 National Medium Term Development Plan (RPJMN) from 9.4 percent to 8.7 percent in 2024.

He hopes that the target can be achieved in the remaining two years.

"Although we are worried about whether it will be achieved, but we hope there is some hope it will be achieved," he said.

In accordance with the theme of National Children's Day 2022, namely Protected Children, Advanced Indonesia, Lisda hopes that children are not only protected physically, but all parties need to play a role in providing protection according to their roles and levels.

"When we talk about being protected, the term is about being protected, not just physically protecting but also protecting our children in different tasks, roles and levels, families, of course, have different ways of protecting the community, including the state," he said.