Smoking Toddler's Mom Seeks Help

Indonesian boy has cut down from 40 a day, mom says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 1, 2010 5:32 AM CDT

The mother of the chain-smoking Indonesian 2-year-old who puffed his way to YouTube fame says she's seeking help to end the toddler's habit. Aldi Rizal has already cut down from 40 cigarettes a day, she tells CNN, but he vomits and hurts himself in tantrums when he can't have cigarettes. "I don't want to give him cigarettes, but what I am I supposed to do? I am confused," the mother says. "I didn't let him smoke, I even forbade him from smoking, but I was trying to stop him from getting sick."

The case "is not shocking at all, but it's very, very sad," said the chairman of Indonesia's National Commission for Child Protection, who met with the tot. "Smoking has been a part of our culture for so long it isn't perceived as being hazardous, as causing illness, as poisonous." He says the boy's parents aren't trying to get him to quit out of concern for his health, but because they're tired of spending so much money on cigarettes. (More smoking stories.)

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