Smoking toddler

Indonesia's smoking toddler cuts back to 15-a-day
A chain-smoking Indonesian toddler has cut back to 15 cigarettes a day thanks to "therapy focused on playing", a child welfare official said Tuesday.

Two-year-old Ardi Rizal shocked the world when a video of him smoking a cigarette appeared on the Internet last month and drew attention to Indonesia's failure to regulate the tobacco industry.

Six months after his father gave him his first cigarette, the overweight boy from Sumatra island was smoking 40 a day and threw violent tantrums if his addiction was not satisfied.

Despite local officials' offer to buy the Rizal family a new car if the boy quits, his parents feel unable to stop him because he throws massive tantrums if they don't indulge him.

His mother, Diana, 26, wept: 'He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.'

Child welfare officials called in to try to wean the toddler off cigarettes said that when they played with him he did not smoke as much.

"The boy has been able to reduce his cigarette intake significantly, very quickly, after the treatment," National Commission for Child Protection chairman Seto Mulyadi told AFP.

"The therapy focused on playing -- we occupied him with toys so that he forgets cigarettes," he said.

Ardi developed his nicotine addiction while spending his days at a traditional market where both of his parents worked, Mulyadi said.

Simple toys and someone to play with were enough to take his mind off cigarettes, at least for a while. The therapists also encouraged Ardi to associate cigarettes with bad things.

"The boy likes singing songs so we tell him that if he continues smoking, he won't be able to be a singer one day, and it works," Mulyadi said.

"It's much easier to help kids like him than teenage tobacco addicts."

Ardi's case has highlighted the tobacco industry's aggressive marketing to women and children in developing countries like Indonesia, where regulations are weak and many people do not know that smoking is dangerous.

Cigarette consumption in the Southeast Asian archipelago of some 240 million people soared 47 percent in the 1990s, according to the World Health Organization.

Indonesia's biggest cigarette manufacturer, PT HM Sampoerna, is an affiliate of Philip Morris International.

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I was quite shocked when i first read this news.

Ardi Rizal's father gave him cigarette at the age of 1 and a half year.

I think that the main cause that Arzi, the 2-years-old toddler who smokes, is his father. If his father did not introduce him this, how would the toddler be able to smoke? If his parents did not pay for the cigarettes for him, how would he be able to smoke (40 cigarettes a day)?

From this, I would say that his father is very irresponsible person because he "introduced" cigarettes to Ardi.. How would a 2 year old know about the consequences about smoking?

Ardi might be healthy now but who knows what will happen in the future?

Some harmful effects of smoking:
1)Heart attacks
2)Strokes
3)Cancer
4)Emphysema, an illness that rots your lungs gradually
5)Stomach ulcers
6)Amputation because of blocked arteries etc

If Ardi is a teenager, he would know about the consequences of smoking and if he still smoke, at least that is his decision and he would bear the consequences himself, but definitely a two-year-old would not know much about health.

Hence, I think that Ardi's father should reflect on his actions and try to do his best to help his son quit smoking as soon as possible.
This is a video of Ardi.