"He had reached the point of crying and begging and when he was not he was crying and pulling his hair"
The world around her has done case of the two-year-old boy from Sukabumi, Indonesia, to the point of smoking almost two packs of cigarettes a day.
After the intervention of the local government, the little boy tries to quit smoking, although the process is not easy, since whenever he escapes his mother's attention, he smokes the cigarette butts he finds on the street.
"Rapi has stopped smoking and playing more with his toys. I am very happy ", says the 35-year-old mother of Mariati, who was the one who bought him cigarettes so that he would not smoke the buttocks he found on the street.
"I was told by the Ministry of Health that this situation could not continue, but how can I change what he likes? "When I was at work, he would go out and find cigarettes on the street," he says. "He had gotten to the point of crying and begging for cigarettes and when he was not there he would give up, cry and pull his hair."
Since he started smoking, he has not undergone tests to determine his state of health. Lately, however, he has been showing some worrying symptoms, as his mother reports: "The other day he had a fever and his body was hot and cold. That had never happened before. "
According to the Daily Mail, medical professor Colin Mendelssohn, "animal studies have shown that nicotine causes damage to the brain.
It can lead to permanent problems with brain function, emotional development and other mental functions. All other symptoms - heart disease, lung disease, cancer - will appear at a much younger age. In addition, the younger children start smoking, the more addicted they become. So the little one will become addicted to nicotine and will be much more prone to other addictions ".
Indonesia is one of the most populous countries in the world in terms of population. Note that smokers under 18 reach 9%.