It all started when his father, Mohammed, gave him a taste of a cigarette when he was 18 months old.  Since then, the now two-year-old Ardi Rizal has been hooked.  Despite not even being out of preschool, the child has a pretty nasty 40 cigarettes-per-day habit which costs his parents roughly $5.47.  That’d be bad even in a Western country, but Mohammed is a fish monger in a country where the average minimum wage is less than $100!

So just how bad is Ardi’s addiction to smoking?  Well, he throws a tantrum when he has a nicotine fit, and all efforts made by his 26-year-old mother to make him quit have been unsuccessful.  “He’s totally addicted,” she confesses.  “If he doesn’t get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall.  He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.”

Officials in Musi Banyuasin, the Sumatran village where the Indonesian family lives, have tried everything to get the Rizals to kick Ardi’s habit.  They’ve even offered to buy the family a car if they get the child to quit smoking, but so far no good, as the pudgy 56-pound toddler prefers to ride around on a toy truck blowing smoke rings rather than running and playing with the other kids.  You can’t get someone to quit if they don’t know they have a problem, and a two-year-old has no idea what he’s really doing.

Tags: Ardi Rizal, toddler who smokes 40 cigarettes a day, smoking, bad habits, two-year-old that smokes, Musi Banyuasin, Sumatra, Indonesia, Mohammed Rizal, Diana Rizal, smoking toddler, unhealthy children, unusual habits

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