Ardi Rizal gained international attention as a child in 2010, when a video posted on YouTube showed the boy, then approximately a year and a half old, walking in diapers while smoking. The case drew attention because of the intensity of the addiction: Ardi was consuming up to 40 cigarettes a day.
The boy lived in the village of Teluk Kemang, in southern Sumatra, Indonesia, where his mother, Diana, worked selling fish. Still very young, Ardi began picking up cigarettes in the village square after observing other people smoking. In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald in 2017, it was reported that his first cigarette had been given to him by his own father.
Ardi's dependence became so severe that it led to intervention from health authorities. The case exposed Indonesia's high smoking rates, where many adults smoke openly in the presence of children, and raised concerns about the lack of enforcement regarding tobacco consumption by minors in the country.
