On buying cigars

Most people laud the new MUI fatwa on discouraging cigars among Indonesian Muslims due to its adverse effects on health.

Well, despite my natural hatred towards tobacco, I agree on the discouraging of smoking not because of its impact on your health.

Nah, those arguments on passive-smoking have started to sound like a cliché here, so let's not get into that.

I agree on the discouraging of smoking simply because of one important fact one may miss here:

more than 40% of Indonesians are categorised as living in poverty.

That's one fact for your head.

Here's another fact that one may also miss:

a lot of those who belong to that 40%+ number love smoking

It is a personal thing when you decide to buy a cigar when you're financially capable, but when your pocket is perpetually dry, refrain from smoking, for goodness sake!

I don't have to provide any pictures or statistical data here, because you can simply walk down the urban streets in Jakarta, Bandung, or Surabaya to simply see how buskers or bus drivers are spending their hard-toiled money on those addictive poison.

Instead of purchasing those hell-bound substances, shouldn't they better save their money for their children's education....say, affording them until university level?

Fuck those smoking-bound (poor) parents. They should have looked for more inexpensive way to poison themselves, should they not?