Chain-smoking children: Indonesia's ongoing tobacco epidemic

Surrounded by farmland and plantations in the small village of Teluk Kemang Sungai Lilin in South Sumatra, a boy, just 8 years old, sits smiling with his mother.

But this boy has a tumultuous past and a reputation that precedes him, having undergone a recovery most children will never face.
Six years ago, Aldi Suganda, also known as Aldi Rizal, was a 2-year-old chain smoker addicted to cigarettes, smoking packs each day. "It was hard for me to stop," he said. "If I am not smoking, my mouth taste is sour and my head feel dizzy.
"I am happy now. I feel more enthusiastic, and my body is feeling fresh," he said.
He became a global sensation as the "chain-smoking toddler," with video clips of him puffing excessively on an endless cigarette supply watched by millions around the world.
His mother, Diana, thinks back to that period and recoils at the memory. Her son would get angry, she remembers, and throw tantrums if she withheld cigarettes from him or failed to give him money to obtain them. "He (would) start to smash his head to the wall. He was crazy, hurting himself if he didn't get a cigarette," she said.
People would accuse her of being a bad mother and regularly question her parenting skills, she said. "I am a weak mom. He always threaten me if I didn't give him money. ... I (was) afraid he (was) going to die."

Aldi is the youngest of three boys born to Diana and her husband, who requested not to be named. But he is far from the only child who picked up the habit across the islands of Indonesia: More than 267,000 children there are estimated to use tobacco products every day.