Indonesian boy praised for cutting down on cigarettes
A young boy in Indonesia who made headlines for his smoking addiction, is being praised by his parents for cutting down to five cigarettes a day.
Until a few months ago Dihan Muhamad was smoking up to two packs of cigarettes a day, the Global Post reports.
The six-year-old from Cilapar has been smoking for years and was featured in a TIME magazine photo back in 2004, which highlighted the alarming smoking rate in Indonesia.
His mother Sulwati said Dihan’s doctor explained that the six-year old had to quit smoking as he had been sick and coughing a lot.
“He’s been trying hard, and now he just smokes five a day,” Sulwati told the Global Post.
While the boy’s parents admitted they were shocked when they discovered their son was smoking, they did not act on it.
His father Ivan, who is a tobacco farmer and chain smoker, explained that Dihan would start crying when a cigarette was taken from him.
The Global Mail reports that activists are blaming Indonesian authorities for the lack of awareness of the dangers of tobacco.
It has been five years since a video of Indonesian boy Ardi Rizal went viral because he smoked 40 cigarettes a day.But little has changed.
Data form the Health Ministry shows nearly 4 million Indonesian children, between the ages of 10 and 14, become smokers every year, according to The Jakarta Post.
While at least at least 239,000 children under the age of 10 have started smoking, according to the National Commission on Child Protection.
The National Commission on Tobacco Control says while the government is concerned about narcotics, it is paying less attention to the negative impact tobacco has on youth.
“There were 240,000 people in Indonesia that died in 2013 because of tobacco, meaning that 660 people died every day,” commissioner Hakim Sorimuda Pohan said last Wednesday.
Hakim added that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo continued to focus his attention on drugs, despite the staggering impact tobacco was having.
“He repeatedly says that we have to fight drugs because 40 to 50 people die every day because of drugs,” she told The Jakarta Post.
“But what about the 660 people who die every day because of tobacco?”
Activists have repeatedly asked for an increase in the price of cigarettes but reform is hard to achieve, reports the Global Mail.
The government introduced graphic health warnings for cigarette packets last June, but cigarette advertising is absolutely everywhere.
Morning news break – March 23
