Two-Year-Old Smoker Ardi Rizal Taken to Jakarta For Help

by Amy Judd | May 31, 2010 at 02:55 pm

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The Two-Year-Old Who Smokes Two Packs a Day Has Been Taken to Jakarta to Get Help For His Addiction

Ardi Rizal sat on his mother's lap and cried in the Jakarta airport because he could not have a cigarette. He pulled on his mother's hair when he realized that he was not going to get what he wanted - namely to feed his addiction and his two-pack a day habit.

The young boy has become something of a celebrity after a video appeared on the Internet of him smoking and his parents seeming to be unconcerned with his deadly habit. As a result Ardi weighs almost twice as much as other children his age and he cannot even play with them because he is so out of shape.

Now he is in Jakarta and his mother is trying to get him some help.

"Smoking has been a part of our culture for so long it isn't perceived as being hazardous, as causing illness, as poisonous," said Seto Mulyadi, chairman of Indonesia's National Commission for Child Protection. "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."

Mr. Mulyadi said that Aldi was a 'victim of his environment' according to CNN. He wants to try and find other things to occupy the boy and educate his parents in the process. He says that the main reason they want their son to quit is not for his health but to save money as a two-pack a day habit is very expensive.

"Well, I don't want to give him cigarettes, but what I am I supposed to do? I am confused," his mother said. "I didn't let him smoke, I even forbade him from smoking, but I was trying to stop him from getting sick."

She admitted that when she was pregnant with Ardi she smoked, but says she quit when he was born. Neither her nor her husband smoke anymore and they are hoping Ardi will quit soon; he just needs to learn how to do that.