Photographer captures disturbing images of children puffing on cigarettes

DailyMail ^ | 21st January 2012 | Lydia Warren

[Daffynition]

Cherubic cheeks framed with gentle ringlets - they are the faces of innocence and beauty.

But with cigarettes lingering between their fingers or pipes perched between their lips, their images are repulsive.

In an attempt to play the attractiveness and vulgarity of smoking off each other, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens has captured 15 eerie images of children puffing on cigarettes, cigars or pipes in a collection entitled 'The Beauty of an Ugly Addiction'.

[Vinnie]

did you roll up the box in your T-shirt sleeve?

And putting them in your sock.

[mnehring]

Not sure if this is *tobacco* he's smoking.

If it is, it is unfiltered and hand-rolled. Just knock on the door and say it is Dave and see what happens.

[Daffynition]

**While the photographs are quite disturbing for most of us, they do make us ask the question – does banning smoking altogether mean we are treating adults like children who need to have the decision made for them?**

Recall the Indonesia 2 y/o boy with a 2-pack/day habit years ago?

[mnehring]

[Robert A Cook PE]

But socialism, abortion, homosexuality, and sodomy are to be taught, encouraged, and promoted in schools to these same children by the democrats!

[Daffynition]

First baseball cards came in packs of cigarettes.

Which is why Honus Wagner's T206 is so rare b/c he didn't want kids smoking, or so the legend goes.

[dainbramaged]

These images are disturbing, but not because of the mock cigarettes. They look like a child molester's photo album.

[MHGinTN]

As the criminal enterprise democrat party spreads its poison, up is down and wrong is right in modern America, as long as the servants to the father of lies are not soundly rejected and placed under societal taboos.

[Daffynition]

[MHGinTN]

LSMFT ... and Frieke Janssens seems more intent on titillating pedophiles than slamming smoking.

[Daffynition]

It won't be the last time *art* oversteps the bounds of decency and values.

[Vinnie]

Wanna see some real smoking kids?
Check out the Zion Coptic Church.

Kids smoking marijuana.

http://www.ethiopianzioncopticchurch.org/

Long report by.. Dan Rather circa 1979, long but toward the end video of kids ‘partaking’.

I was living in Miami at the time and remember scenes of young boys smoking joints the size of a churchill.

[wonkowasright]

You know about 5 or 6 years ago I was in a camp store in a state park somewhere, could have been Georgia when I ran across a pack of those candy cigs still forsale.

Who knows how many decades old the pack was.

[hattend]

Both in Old sacramento, CA and in Virginia City, NV there are stores that sell all the old candies we loved as kids. Candy cigs and Bubblegum cigars. The place in Virginia City also has old soft drinks that I thought had disappeared.

Perhaps you have a similar tourist trap store near you?

[Daffynition]

Holy smoke! Thanks for the link.

[Jack Hydrazine]

In 1989 the Minnesota Department of Health produced a famous ad campaign with their advertising agency Martin/Williams, the film being directed by Rick Dublin (both from Minneapolis). Here are two of the 12 animals smoking. This campaign was recycled in France in 1994 by the National Committee for Tobacco Control.

You can purchase various anti-smoking posters here including the one from the famous ad campaign.

[Doc Savage]

Show them photos of small-cell carcinoma at autopsy.

[susannah59]

They look like a child molester's photo album. I agree. The cigarettes aren't the really disturbing part of the photos.

I remember the candy cigarettes. They probably weren't my favorite candy but I did get them occasionally. I bought one pack of cigarettes as a teenager, just to try out smoking. I didn't enjoy it that much and decided that 50 cents a pack was way too much money to pay so I've never smoked since.

It was not uncommon in the past for children to smoke; I've encountered a number of older folks who started smoking (or in some cases dipping or chewing) at quite young ages, 5, 6, or 7. Starting as a young teen, 13 or 14, was even more common.

[X-spurt]

Of course! There’s no pockets on Tees.

[stormhill]

Means nothing, I’m sure but as a kid in Newark I used to buy candy cigarettes and I’ve never smoked; not even one cigarette to experiment.