Seeing Indonesian children smoking unfortunately isn’t such a shock to us anymore. After all, Indonesia is home to Aldi, arguably the most famous smoking baby in the world, who, for all the wrong reasons, became a viral sensation and was even featured on HBO’s “Last Week With John Oliver”.
But Aldi’s case is just one snapshot of a much bigger problem of underage smoking in Indonesia.
The mini-documentary above, which comes to us from Seeker Stories, manages to provide greater insight into the magnitude of the problem. It showcases the work of Canadian photojournalist Michelle Siu, who travelled to Jakarta to snap photos of children – from teenagers to those as young as four – who are hooked on cigarettes.
In addition to the damning stories about boys throwing tantrums if they don’t get their fix, or how almost all the Indonesian men addicted to cigarettes started smoking before the age of 19, what really makes these images so shocking is how these small children appear so at ease with lit cigarettes in their hands, as if they’re seasoned smokers.
As Siu writes on her website, “Young smokers begin the cycle of addiction but at a health cost for generations to come. The juxtaposition of young boys smoking like seasoned addicts is jarring yet this project is intended to not only shock and inform viewers but to demonstrate the lack of enforcement of national health regulations and to question the country’s dated relationship with tobacco.”
Sadly, there seems to be little in the way of new tobacco regulations in Indonesia to prevent children from smoking. The government at least added graphic warning on cigarette packs, but ours are arguably quite tame by comparison to the graphic warnings in other countries.
Meanwhile, tobacco advertisements and sponsorship are still plentiful and underage smoking is still a common sight. Indonesia has still got a long way to go and some very powerful tobacco companies to beat if it’s ever going to quit its addiction to the world’s deadliest drug.
To view Michelle Siu’s ‘Marlboro Boys’ photo series on Indonesian children smoking, visit her
website at http://www.michellesiu.com
