2 Year Old Smoking - Smoking Toddler

OK guys its my first day on the road today and I promised you that I would be hubbing a lot while I was travelling, you can always rely on me for the most popular gossip circulating the web and so I bring you the '2 year old smoking'. That's right people, you may have already heard about the 2 year old smoking video on Youtube from a forum post and this is mainly where the story has been causing outrage.

The footage shown below is recorded from the British news channel 'ITN' and talks about the Indonesian toddler smoking 40 cigarettes a day, his name is Ardi Rizal and his dad Mohammed who works as a fishmonger must fork out $6.10 a day to buy a specific brand that the boy favours.

The parents of Ardi Rizal have been offered a brand new car by the local council if they promise to help the child stop smoking but his mother Diana(26) frets that he is totally addicted, she says he gets aggressive and bangs his head against the wall if they are taken away. His father Mohammed seems more lax about the situation and says 'He looks pretty healthy, I don't see the problem'.

Photo courtesy of ssoosay

The attitude amongst people online towards the two year old smoking baby seems to be that of a humorous nature but the fact that Ardi is 4 stone and can barely move on his own is tragic. The default photo I included portrays Ardi in a caricature style pose along with Sesame street puppet 'Oscar' also smoking and it does well to captivate and shock viewers into questioning what 'trash' the youth of tomorrow must grow up in.

I know this hub was probably a bit risqué but it is a serious subject and asks the question 'who is to blame for the 2 year old boy smoking'?  The towns officials pass the buck onto the cigarette companies and say that since advertising for local events in Indonesia is sponsored by many Tobacco brands that it would be hard to spread a negative image of smoking to children. Indonesia is the worlds third largest tobacco consumer and it is estimated that 25% of children aged 3-15 have tried cigarettes and 3.2% continue to smoke.

Photo courtesy of Pitufaseo

Aside from the 2 - 3 year old smoking pictures I also found one on Flickr of a 13 year old smoking in Romania and again this is terrible, I say this because I know how hard it was for me to quit 5 years ago and Ardul smokes 40 a day and my dad has been smoking 20-40 for nearly 40 years and cannot stop.

The photo above was untitled 'The Romanian way' but I doubt that it represents how all Romanians live, just because the country is not as economically advanced it doesn't mean that countries like the UK and US don't have underage smokers. If a story came out like Ardul's in the UK there would be intervention by the child protection agencies but children aged 12-15 it is dismissed as 'experimentation'.

Photo courtesy of maartend

I think it is sick that some company has decided to manufacture a gimmick product of ' a smoking toddler' made from ceramic, in other words its an adult's toy that simulates a baby smoking fake cigarettes.

I don't know what people find funny about a 2 year old baby smoking is, a child's life is supposed to be filled with innocence and good times, how would you feel if someone had got you hooked at that age and ruined your health?

Photo courtesy of andrewcurrie