Brooke Edmonds
November, 5, 2010
4:16pm
Back last spring shocking new came out of Indonesia. There was a two year old boy that became well known in the last six months, but for a terrible reason. This little boy was known as “the smoking toddler.” There was a huge video that streamed the web of this two year old chain smoking. This toddler started smoking when he was eleven months old and within five months, started smoking up to four packs a day! People reacted fast to this video and quickly got the young boy sent to smoking rehab. Thankfully the boy has quit for good six months later. The only sad part to this story is, that there are many more children in Indonesia just like this two year old. The government has estimated that about twenty-five percent of kids over the age of three have tried cigarettes and three percent of those became regular smokers. In Indonesia cigarettes are a lot cheaper and easier for kids to buy with no questions asked. The Indonesian government has passed a health law, but it has yet to slow down the increase in child smokers.
I was amazed when I came across this story. I had not heard about it before so I pulled up a couple videos about the toddler to watch so I could learn a little more. I could not believe my eyes as I watched this little two year old smoking on a cigarette like it was nothing. Its unbelievable that people are allowing this to go on all around them. This situation in Indonesia would be a sociological problem because it is affecting a wide number of children in this area. One in four kids in Indonesia have tried a cigarette and more and more children are becoming addicted. Something must be done immediately do get these kids to quit smoking. The government needs to make stricter tobacco law right away, to not allow children under a certain to buy these cigarettes. If action is not taken soon, many kids will be getting lung cancer and other smoking related illnesses and dying of young ages.
4 comments:
A quarter of kids over age of 3 have tried smoking cigarette? What's the definition of 'kids'? --Between which ages?
If this figure is not misleading, then it is so shocking!--what are the parents doing there in Indonesia?
Apart from a high supply which leads to availability of cheap cigarette, I think that parental education and state education on health and smoking are also to blame. And clearly they have completely failed in Indonesia.
More severe law may pose greater deterrence, but I doubt if it is easy to enforce against child smoking.
This definitely surprised me! How could someone so young get in contact with a cigarette, much less know how to smoke one. My grandpa passed away from lung cancer after smoking many years so seeing anyone, especially people so young that are so hung up on tobacco worries me.
When I see things like this I try to look at it holistically and find a legitimate reason and I suppose that cultural norms are different everywhere and I have to imagine that people think that it's weird that we allow our young girls to wear shorts outside of the home that don't reach their knees and find it unhealthy for their body image. As well as that we allow for our children to digest McDonalds knowing that they should be running outside because of how overweight we have become. I do believe that the age is quite scary but I also believe that feeding our children meals that have a lasting rate of two weeks is horrible as well.
This is such an alarming article! 2 year old children smoking cigarettes?! This to me just seems unreal. I think that something really needs to be done about this issue, and I think that the main problem lies behind the fact the parents need to educate their children more to prevent this from happening.
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