None is not necessarily or inherently better because advertising generates revenue. You would need to weigh the revenue vs. the nebulous value of "no advertising". Given that there exists stores in Sao Paulo, you still see "advertisements", just not on billboards.

You speak of the grit - said grit could be improved with government efforts funded by... advertisements in part.

I suppose this lack of nuanced thinking is why the war on drugs is still a thing. There are many bad things that you can try to unliterally ban. There are tradeoffs.