When the anti-tobacco activists are still busy campaigning the dangers of tobacco and pressed the government to create a strict regulatory control, actually, the international corporate business is the one who take the benefit. This condition brings them profits. Wanda Hamilton criticized this in her book entitled Nicotine War, War of Nicotine and the Drug Dealer.
In her book, Wanda tells about the facts that behind the global agenda for tobacco control, there are big business interests of drugs trading known as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT). There is the strong impression that the public health interest through the anti-tobacco campaign is just a cover of NRT products trading.
"In the 1980s, public health agencies were fully poised to launch an attack on smoking behavior as a public health issue. Pharmaceutical companies actually see this as a golden opportunity to offer to their own nicotine products as an aid for quitting smoking. And obviously, there is nothing more profitable than the fact that the world health organization helped market the anti-smoking drugs as part of a program to eradicate tobacco,” she said in the discussion of her book conducted in the building of Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM, Saturday (12/6).
Meanwhile, in the view of UGM economist, Drs. Revrisond Baswir, MBA, actually Indonesia is currently colonized not on the real sector, but in the mindset or perspective of people to see a problem. In relation to smoking and health, the research on anti-smoking campaigns is currently no longer based on a scientific aspect but business interests. "Seizing the golden nicotine is about how humans consume it. Pharmaceutical companies have observed how people enjoy smoking while preparing for a replacement product to gain benefits from the people who consume cigarettes," he said.
In his view, the problem of smoking or not smoking is now irrelevant, because there are corporate interests. “Actually, to smoke or not to smoke is equally business interest. But our concern is how those interests are based on the view of the majority of the people and the national policies, including economic policy," he added.