Tobacco News

You may have seen the disturbing video of a two-year-old Indonesian boy chain smoking on youtube.com. Well, CBS tracked down the child, and it turns out, he started puffing away when he was just 11 months old.
CBS tracked down the child on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, in a small fishing village. When he was seen, reporters said he had a lit cigarette in-hand.
The parents of Aldi Suganda, Rizal and Diana, say the boy plays with toys just like any kid, but they found him smoking when he was just 11 months old at the local market, where they sell fish.
“He was being very fussy, always cried when we were there to sell. So we just let him play by himself. One day we followed him from behind and found him hanging out at a cigarette stall. He had a cigarette in his hand, already lit. He already knew how to do it very well, like an adult. It was actually his own wish,” Diana Suganda said, with help of a translator.

Before long, Aldi’s parents say he was smoking more than 40 cigarettes a day. In fact, he often uses one cigarette to light the next.

But in Indonesia, Aldi may not be such a surprising case. Smoking is ingrained in the country’s culture; they are the third largest tobacco consumer in the world. One third of the population smokes, including many children, who have a cigarette before they are ten years old.

Aldi is now in a government-sponsored rehabilitation program, but it’s not clear if that will clear up the habit he’s literally grown up knowing.