Ardi Rizal, a 2-year-old Indonesian boy may not even know what YouTube is, yet his clip puffing a cigarette stick picks up thousands of viewers, and critiques too. Although strangers believe that this toddler faces a grave health risk, his parents never see it that way.
They even think that Ardi is healthy when he is overweight for going past 25 kilograms that he cannot run like kids of his age.
Mohammed, a fishmonger in the village of Musi Banyuasin gave his son Ardi his first cigarette-smoking experience when the boy is only 18 months. Right now they are spending an average of US$5 to supply him around 40 sticks of cigarette daily.
Both of Ardi’s parents prefer to tolerate his addiction rather than finding another way to control his childhood tantrums when he craves for cigarette. His mother, Diana describes how little Ardi would even bang his head onto the wall until he is given his puff stuff.
Britain’s Sun Newspaper is the first to show the video on their website which apparently reflects a trend in Indonesia. Based on the recent data shown by the Central Statistics Agency, about 25 percent of Indonesians aged 3 to 15 year-old has smoked cigarettes, while in 2004, there’s 2.8 percent of 5 to 9 year-old who lit up to puff.
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