[danielf]

Originally Posted by Derek S

If anyone is thinking about giving up then this shows just how bad for your health smoking is

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/8493288.stm

He was probably smoking kreteks. They are supposed to crackle, not explode...

Kretek (pronounced /ˈkriːtɛk/) are cigarettes made with a blend of tobacco, cloves and other flavors. The word "kretek" itself is an onomatopoetic term for the crackling sound of burning cloves. Haji Jamahri, a resident of Kudus, Java, created kreteks in the early 1880s as a means to deliver the eugenol of cloves to the lungs, as it was thought to help asthma. Jamahri believed the eugenol cured his chest pains and he started to market his invention to the village, but he died before he could mass market it. M. Nitisemito took his place and began to commercialize the new cigarettes. Today, kretek manufacturers directly employ over 180,000 people in Indonesia and an additional 10 million indirectly.[1]

Partly due to favorable taxation compared to "white" cigarettes,[2] kreteks are by far the most widely-smoked form of cigarettes in Indonesia, where about 90% of smokers usually smoke kreteks.