Critics are reacting with outrage to an Indonesian billboard campaign by the tobacco company PT Sampoerna which, translated, says that “Dying is better than leaving a friend; Sampoerna is a cool friend.”
That is being interpreted as a statement that smokers would rather die than give up their Hilton cigarettes. And Indonesia is a country where indeed many do. An estimated 140 million of the country’s 245 million people smoke cigarettes, cigars and cheroots of varying scents and hues, puffing their way through some 225.5 billion cigarettes annually, a large percentage of them clove cigarettes known as kretek.
