Irony of life

When a guest enters my office, he will first see a sheet of paper on the wall showing a red-eyed skull smoking a cigarette with the inscription: "please refrain from smoking" in Japanese, English and Indonesian. Another sheet of paper gives friendly advice: 1) Emphysema is a terrible disease 2) Health is not everything, but without health, everything is nothing 3) Smoking shortens your lifespan.

In an air conditioned and closed room, I think it is not too much to ask anyone not to smoke. One day, a senior manager from Tokyo came to our office and, the disciplinarian that he was, he disappeared and started puffing on his cigarette in the corridor. For some people, smoking seems to be an indispensable enjoyment. I remember that during wartime there were people who would gladly trade their ration of bread for a pack of cigarettes.

A colleague of mine remarked: You forbid people to smoke in the office, but you are doing your best to cajole a cigarette factory to buy our company's cigarette paper. Don't you think this is paradoxical? I have to admit that my colleague was right.

As a matter fact, the public has been repeatedly warned about the hazards of smoking, but it cannot be denied that cigarette factories are among the largest taxpayers in the country. If my memory does not fail me, Gudang Garam alone pays 400 billion rupiah per year in excise tax, or more than one billion rupiah per day, in addition to employing 50,000 workers, ninety percent of whom are women.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta