Thursday, May 27, 2010

Too young to be addicted

I happened to catch this in today's New York Daily News. A 2-year-old boy has taken up smoking. Let me repeat. This child is just 2. In a small Indonesian country, this kid has as many as 40 cigarettes a day, and otherwise, according to his father, is a normal child. If you try to tell him he can't have any more, he reacts as any normal toddler would, by throwing a temper tantrum. I can just picture him going to kindergarten in about 2-3 years, and using bathroom breaks to cover for taking a smoke, provided of course his parents don't break him of the addiction before then.

Not long ago, a local advertisement suggested that kids who take up smoking might actually pick up the addiction while in their mother's womb if she insists on smoking during her pregnancy. I thought then that it was a little extreme, but then, maybe they were on to something after all.......!

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