Holy smoking children, Batman!

Image source

I came across the image above as a photo (didn't know it was an album cover) and was a bit disturbed but I thought to myself, "Alas, this is what America has come to," and actually now that I think about it - I'm a little upset that I wasn't MORE upset.  The fact that this picture didn't shock my conscience is saying something about how jaded or cynical or even numb I've become to horrible things in society.

Then I saw something on imgfave.com that said it was a photo that accompanied some scientific paper/study about an uber-manipulative/controlling child who got her mother to let her do whatever she wanted, including smoking cigarettes.  Now, I was intrigued by this so I started using Google to search for this backstory.

Unfortunately, I didn't find anything about this alleged psych case, but I DID find some interesting and disturbing news about smoking babies/children.

There is a 2 year old smoker in Indonesia who smokes 40FORTY40 cigarettes a day - I'm no expert, but I think that's something like 2 packs a day ...  The kid is SO unhealthy that can't even run or walk around on his own - he smokes while riding a toy truck all day.

I don't even know how you GET a child younger than 2 to start smoking - and how it GETS to this point.  Literally, I have no idea and my research didn't turn up anything further.  My guess is, dad gets drunk and thinks it'd be funny/amusing to have kid take a puff of his cigarette.  Gives it to kid - kid has no idea what to do but still has natural sucking reflex. Coughs and gags but the nicotine has an UBER-strong effect on his tiny baby brain and body.  Kid starts nagging and fussing when dad has cigarette and sh*tty dad doesn't want to deal with the noise and idea of discipline and just hands the kid a cigarette the way suburban parents hand their kid their iPhone to appease them.  And this starts the cycle.  (JUST A GUESS).

And if you thought that not actually making smokes available for your kid but just doing it yourself didn't cause problems, here's another article that says otherwise:

It was found that when 2 to 6 year-olds children were asked to "shop" for groceries for a hungry doll, they were four times more likely to choose cigarettes if their parents smoked, and three times more likely to pick wine or beer if their parents drank at least once a month.

 Useful Tuesday hint? Don't smoke around your kids.