Boy Ardi, who smoked 40 cigarettes a day, remember him? That's what happened to him.

Seven years later: what happened to the 2-year-old who smoked 40 cigarettes a day.

Seven years ago, in 2010, the world was shocked by a video in which a 2-year-old from Indonesia smoked cigarettes. One by one, he just did not let them out of his hands, and according to his parents, he smoked 40 cigarettes a day, sometimes even more. Now the baby has grown, but was he able to cope with his addiction?

The kid, who became the hero of that scandalous movie, was called Ardi Rizal. He lived in a small village on the island of Sumatra, and neither his family nor locals found anything wrong with smoking. On the video, he smoked, just like a steam locomotive, replacing one cigarette with another, and the locals simply shrugged their shoulders and said it was funny. Mother of the baby assured that the cigarettes are necessary to Ardi, because once he does not get them, how he began to get angry, scream and even beat his head against the wall. "It's bad for him, he's dizzy if he does not smoke," Ardy's mother justified herself. The father of the child was less verbose, he just said that for him the son looks quite healthy.

As soon as Ardi's story became public and attracted worldwide attention, the authorities of Indonesia attracted social workers to help solve the situation. "Of course, Ardi became a victim of his environment," said the representative of the organization for the protection of the rights of the child in Indonesia. "This society has been smoking for so long that they consider it to be a normal habit that does not cause any harm." The child should be distracted from his dependence, in return. "

The responsibility for Ardi's health should lie on his parents, but they did not seem to see anything wrong with the two-year-old smoking. When her mother brought her son to Jakarta for a check-up at the rehabilitation center, it turned out that this decision was caused not so much by anxiety for her son's health as by financial difficulties: for a simple family from the village, buying so many cigarettes a day was very difficult.

In fact, the Ardi case is not an isolated case: the problem with smoking in Indonesia has a national scale. About 80 million children in this country start smoking before they are 10 years old. Advertising of cigarettes filled almost all advertising surfaces, adults smoke almost constantly, without seeing a problem in it. In 2008, for example, in a country with a population of 235 million residents, more than 165 billion cigarettes were sold.

The case with Ardi raised a wave of outrage in the world, aimed at the current situation in Indonesia. At some point, the government surrendered under pressure and organized a national campaign to end smoking among children.

As for Ardi himself, he was placed in a rehabilitation center. Conventional programs for adults did not fit the baby because of his age, he could not explain the consequences or treat him with a medicamentous method. Doctors decided to distract the child from his dependence, shifting attention to something else, which also brings him pleasure. And so Ardie went from one dependence to another: he began to absorb an incredible amount of food, and most often it was unhealthy food containing huge doses of sugar. So, at 6 years old, Ardie earned himself obesity.

Ardi's parents did not stay away from the son's problems. They also received help, mostly educational. And when my mother realized that she alone can not help her son cope with the new addiction, she went with him to a nutritionist who prescribed a tough diet for the boy.

To completely get rid of the new addiction, the boy took almost two years. By the age of 8, he had stopped eating everything that was in his field of vision, he stopped smoking cigarettes, and at last he began to look like a normal healthy, cheerful boy.

Matt Myers, president of the campaign aimed at delivering tobacco dependence among children in Indonesia, explains the situation: "Now in Indonesia, this problem is more acute than ever, and the blame for this lies with the government of the country, which began to encourage the sale of cigarettes 60 years ago. the country has more smoking children than anywhere else, if you go around the country, then at every step you will see tobacco advertising. Smoking here is not just a contagious habit, it is the norm for a society that is supported by advertising on all For the Western world now it is unthinkable, but here it is in the order of things. "

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