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Two-year-old boy has quit
smoking
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A two-year-old boy in Indonesia, who used to
smoke 40 cigarettes a day, has quit smoking after entering rehab. Child
protection officials sent Aldi Rizal for therapy and, after three months of
treatment, he has kicked the habit. He is now playing normally for the first
time. The rehab left Aldi confused. He cried after finishing his last
cigarette and then beat his head on walls, The Sun reported yesterday.
He had already started showing health
complications with his heart developing a thicker lining. He often had a vacant
or listless look. Aldi started smoking at 11 months when his fishmonger father
gave him a cigarette. The boy's parents, of Sekayu, Indonesia, sought help as
they couldn't afford his two packets a day habit. "The money can now go on other
things," his mother was quoted as saying. — IANS
News published in
www.srikumar.com in May 2010
Ardi, an Indonesian 2 year old boy
smokes 40 cigarettes per day. He is rarely seen without a cigarette,
insists on the same brand, costing £3.78 (about 5.50 U.S. dollars) a day.
BEIJING, -- Taking a deep drag on his cigarette
while resting on the steering wheel of his truck, he looks like a parody of a
middle-aged lorry driver.
But the image covers up a much more disturbing truth: At just the tender age of
two, Ardi Rizal's health has been so ruined by his 40-a-day habit that he now
struggles to move by himself.
The four-stone Indonesia toddler is certainly far too unfit to run around with
other children - and his condition is set to rapidly deteriorate.
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." But, 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.
Ardi will smoke only one brand and his habit costs his parents 3.78
British pounds (about 5.50 U.S. dollars) a day in Musi Banyuasin, in Indonesia's
South Sumatra province. But in spite of this, his fishmonger father Mohammed,
30, said: "He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem."
Ardi's youth is the extreme of a disturbing trend. Data from the Central
Statistics Agency showed 25 per cent of Indonesian children aged three to 15
have tried cigarettes, with 3.2 per cent of those active smokers.
The percentage of five to nine year olds lighting up increased from 0.4 per cent
in 2001 to 2.8 per cent in 2004, the agency reported.
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