Sukabumi, West Java. An 8-year-old boy who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day has highlighted Indonesia’s failure to regulate the tobacco industry, the country’s child protection commission said on Monday.After food, cigarettes account for the second-largest household expenditure in Indonesia, where nearly half the population lives on less than two dollars a day.
But there is no minimum age for buying or smoking cigarettes.
“Ilham started smoking when he was 4 years old,” the boy’s father, a motorcycle taxi driver called Umar, was quoted as saying by state news agency Antara.
“Now he can finish smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.”
The boy, who lives in a village in Sukabumi, would fly into a rage and “smash glass windows or anything” if he was not given cigarettes, he added. Read More
