Puff anywhere possible

By Protus Tanuhandaru

After Seven months, the long established regulation prohibiting smokers from puffing in public places is proven to be ineffective, because to those highly addicted, a puff is too good to resist.

Despite many personnel deployed to ensure smokers smoke in permitted locations, smokers, unhappy with the unpopular ordinance, still nonetheless find ways to continue their 'habit', somehow, in public places supposedly patrolled by the so-called 'smoke-banning police'.

Seeing its ordinance does not work the way it initially figured, the government is now considering not only deploying more personnel to watch public spaces it deems still prone to smokers, but also plea to the public to assist in enforcing the ordinance.

However, neither of these will work, as Jakarta and other cities also implementing the prohibition of smoking in certain places are too vast for the small number of 'smoke-banning police'.

Nor will the public be able to help enforce the ordinance, as they rarely obey even much simpler rules than those forbidding smoking in public places and indeed smokers are also members of the public.