Posted on 05/28/2010 12:04:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A two year old child in Indonesia has incited worldwide outrage. A video showing the toddler smoking a cigarette popped up on the internet site YouTube. Little Sumatran Ardi Rizal is addicted to the cancer causing sticks claims his father. His father Mohammed Rizal claims the baby throws a fit if he does not get a cigarette.
The elder Rizal says he gave his son his first cigarette when he was just 18 months old, and he has been smoking ever since. The little guy is up to 40 cigarettes a day, more than an average adult would normally smoke. Rizal goes on to say his son looks healthy, so he does not see the harm in allowing him to smoke. However, the so-called healthy child is unable to run with other children. Officials in the small fishing village where the Rizals live has offered to buy the family a car if they will make the baby stop smoking.
According to the boy's parents, he goes through two packs a day and throws temper tantrums if he's not allowed to smoke.
His father apparently got him down the road to becoming a severe smoker after letting him take his first puff at 18 months.
Smoking is very popular in Indonesia and children are not exempt from the habit. Nearly 3 percent of 5 to 9 year old children are smokers in the small country. 25 percent have smoked at some time between 3 and 15 years of age. The head of the Indonesian child protection commission blames tobacco companies for the excessive advertising. Benny Wahyudi, an official at the Industry Ministry says the government has taken steps to reduce the number of smokers in the country. One step was to reduce the number of cigarettes produced from 245 billion per year to 240 billion per year.
Indonesia is by no means a "small country."
Indonesia has approx. 230 million inhabitants, making it the world's fourth largest, by population.
It has a land area of approx. 1.9 million square km, making it the worlds 16th largest by area. (It is only slightly smaller than Mexico.)
Regards,
Van Halen’s fault.
Sticks! Lol!
How many people have you known who got sick (usually cancer) when they quit smoking? I noticed the correlation just personally from people I have known. That’s when I started looking into the relationship and then the meme on smoking. Surprise! It’s right up there with man made global warming!
Thanks for posting this - I’m saving it and will check out the links.
There is a really good report I have that you don’t - if I can locate it among my email files, I’ll let you know and see if I can copy it.
Cypress Hill: The Early Years.
Smoking depresses your appetite. Imagine what a butterball the kid would be if he didn’t smoke.
It is well observed, and a taboo, phenomenon backed up by unambiguous evidence from animal experiments (see the thread above for half a dozen references on this aspect). Left to smoke for the entire lifespan, even at huge concentrations (at the edge of asphyxiation), smoking animals live ~20 percent longer, while remaining sharper and ~15 percent thinner throughout. Forced into abrupt complete quiting from heavy smoking at equivalent of middle age, they get rapidly fat, lazy, dumb and sick.
Surprise! It’s right up there with man made global warming!
Yep, exactly. It was in fact none other than EPA (under Clinton) that created SHS mythology with their infamous "meta-study", the greatest masterpiece of junk science. That fraud was then used to whip up the antismoking hysteria among general public along with denormalization of smokers (i.e. turning them into subhumans and subjecting them to heavy handed social and economic abuses not seen in civilized world since 1930s Germany). The campaign made a fortune for antismoking industry, mainly for the Big Pharma, which is the chief financier of antismoking (laws, organizations, media PR) and its pseudo-science.
And then there’s the well known danger of that terrible scourge of humanity, second-hand smoke!
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