I don’t know if you remember Liangliang Tong, a two-year-old who smoked like a 40-years-old. However, Tong was an apprentice compared to the giant Ardi Rizal, unfortunately.
Ardi lives in Sumatra (Indonesia), has two years and smokes forty cigarettes a day. Sumatra is a small fishing village of Musi Banyuasin where 25% of children already tried smoking and 3.2% are active smokers. No doubt their parents know how to care of their son, Mohamed (30 years), the father of the child, gave him his first cigarette when Ardi was 18-months-old and is not at all worried about the health of small boy … He says he looks healthy!
The two-year-old who weighs 25 kilos, has trouble walking and if he doesn’t get cigarettes he gets angry, screams and bangs his head against the wall “, as confirmed by Diana (26 years), mother the baby.
Diana insists that he is “an addict”, and when Ardi doesn’t smoke, “says he feels dizzy and sick.”
Organizations defending the rights of children in Indonesia begun to discuss openly about the health damage caused by the smoke, in a country where one third of the population is addicted to smoking and cigarettes can be bought for about a few cents.
The health minister Endang Sedyaningsih acknowledged that convincing young people that smoking is harmful is difficult, because in Indonesia is perceived as something positive and cigarette companies are big sponsors of scholarships, sporting events and campaigns of all kinds.
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