WATCH: Indonesian kids hooked on cigarettes

JAKARTA, Indonesia – In Indonesia, kids as young as 2 years old are hooked on cigarettes. 

Because of the lack of government regulations on tobacco, cigarettes in Indonesia are cheap and easy to access, making it within reach of children.

On Wednesday, November 18, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids posted the video above on their Facebook page, with the caption: “This heartbreaking video of young children smoking underscores the need for Indonesia to strengthen its tobacco control laws, which are some of the weakest in the world.”

The video compiles the work of Michelle Siu, a photojournalist, who documented the phenomenon of children smoking in Indonesia. She said the kids she met in Jakarta threw “tantrums or fits” if their cigarettes were taken away.

In the video above, the narrator also says that the fact there is no government regulation, means “there was very little being done to solve the problem or make it better.”

It also doesn’t help that “big tobacco companies are targeting countries like Indonesia,” especially since more developed nations are actively working to decrease tobacco consumption.

Targetting Indonesia has paid off of for these companies, where 2/3 of Indonesian men are smokers, almost all of whom took up the habit before they were 19.

An estimated 60 million people smoke in Indonesia, about a quarter of the population, and about half or 30 million will die due to smoking related illnesses.

But while tobacco taxes have bene increased, and there are talks to ban advertising, tobacco’s grip on indonesia doesn’t look like its going away anytime soon. – Rappler.com