Ardi Rizal is aged just two – but the toddler has already developed a 40-cigarettes-a-day smoking habit after his father let him smoke when he was just 18 months.

Two-year-old Ardi Rizal smokes 40 cigarettes a day, weighs four stone and is too unfit to run with other children (Picture: Barcroft)

Ardi got his first taste for tobacco when his father Mohammed, a 30-year-old fishmonger, gave him a cigarette when he was a year and a half old – and now he throws tantrums if he can’t doesn’t get his 40 cigarettes a day.

Ardi, from Musi Banyuasin in Sumatra, Indonesia, will smoke only one brand and his habit costs his parents £3.78 a day – in a province where the minimum wage is around £69 a month.The two-year-old now weighs 4 stone, and trundles round on a toy truck blowing smoke rings as he is too unfit to run with the other children.



His 26-year-old mother Diana, who has been trying to get him to quit but with little success, said: ‘He’s totally addicted. If he doesn’t get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.’


Officials have offered to buy the family a car if he quits, but his father said: ‘He looks pretty healthy to me. I don’t see the problem.’