Indonesian cigarette ad has anti-tobacco lobby fuming

Aug 26, 2011, 4:54 GMT

Bangkok - A South-East Asian anti-tobacco group on Friday blasted Indonesia's Sampoerna company for its advertisement campaign launched this Ramadan that suggests it's better to die than go without a cigarette.

The Jakarta billboard ad says, 'Dying is better than leaving a friend; Sampoerna is a cool friend,' showing a man running to catch up with his girlfriend standing in the doorway of a public bus.

'It is ludicrous to call a hazardous product that kills half its users a 'friend',' said South-East Asia Tobacco Alliance (SEATCA) president Bungon Ritthiphakdee. 'It is simply despicable for Sampoerna to trash the Indonesian people in this manner,' he added.

PT Sampoerna, which is partly owned by Philip Morris International, is the largest Indonesian tobacco company.

The offending billboard was put up during Ramadan, when devout Muslims avoid eating and smoking from dawn to dusk.

'It appears PT Sampoerna has strange ideas about how Ramadan should be spent - with its cigarettes. This is an insult to the Muslims in Indonesia,' Bungon said.

Among South-East Asian countries, Indonesia has the largest number of smokers at 57 million out of a population of 240 million.

Every year more than 200,000 people die from smoking-related diseases in Indonesia, according to the Bangkok-based SEATCA.

'Indonesia is the only country in South-East Asia that still has not banned tobacco advertising, and as long as Indonesia allows tobacco advertising, this kind of irresponsibility from the tobacco companies will continue,' Bungon said.

Sampoerna sold an estimated 32 billion cigarettes last year in Indonesia, accounting for about 30 per cent of the market.

SEATCA estimated that Indonesia's health care costs for people suffering from tobacco-related illnesses amount to 1.2 billion dollars annually.