An eight-year-old Indonesian boy who smokes more than a pack of cigarettes a day will undergo a month of therapy to kick his four-year habit, a child welfare official said Friday. Indonesia’s Child Protection Commission chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait said the boy, Ilham, who smokes around 25 cigarettes a day, needed “emergency help” as his addiction had reached “alert level”, affecting his behaviour. “You can see a dramatic change of behaviour when he doesn’t have a cigarette for a while. He becomes emotionally aggressive and uncontrollable. He acts like he’s possessed by evil spirits,” Sirait told AFP. The boy’s father Agan Umar said his son would become enraged and “smash glass windows or whatever’s around” if he is not constantly given cigarettes. “I hope the therapy works so my son can go back to school and live a normal life like the other kids,” Umar said. The boy will leave his village in Sukabumi in western Java on Monday to start receiving intensive specialist care in the capital Jakarta, Sirait said.
