June 2, 2010
updated
Jakarta, Indonesia
Maybe this is where Smoker in Chief picked up his habit.
(Right: Lisa Jacks)
Indonesian babies smoking with the full consent of caregiver.
It’s considered by some to be “entertainment”.
CNN: Between 2001 -2007, the number of children (5-9) smoking in Indonesia jumped 400 percent. That numbers in the tens of thousands and wouldn’t include these two boys.
Nearly 170 nations have signed a treaty calling for health warnings and other anti-smoking measures. Indonesia, however, is the only country in the Asia-Pacific region not to have ratified the World Health Organization’s framework on tobacco control. Legislation has been stuck in parliament for years.
Unnamed 4 y/o Indonesian boy who “went into rehab and is now smoke-free”.
Actual quote.
Video of the puffing tots.
No word if it’s just boys who are allowed to smoke.
Seto Mulyadi, chairman of Indonesia’s National Commission for Child Protection:
Smoking has been a part of our culture for so long it isn’t perceived as being hazardous, as causing illness, as poisonous. A lot of adults who are around children will smoke. They will carry a baby in one hand and a cigarette in another. Even mothers don’t understand that they are poisoning their children.
Secondhand smoke is one thing – giving a 2 y/o a cigarette to smoke is another.
2 y/o ALDI: 44lbs, 40 cigs/day, $4/day habit
ALDI’s mother DIANA “forbade” him from smoking:
I was smoking when I was pregnant, but after I gave birth I quit. I don’t remember when, but we went to the market and then suddenly he had a cigarette in his hand. Even when he was a baby and he would smell smoke he would be happy.
I didn’t let him smoke, I even forbade him from smoking, but I was trying to stop him from getting sick.
I don’t want to give him cigarettes, but what I am I supposed to do?
