Portugal In Hot Water For Letting Five-Year-Olds Smoke On Weekends

Source - VALE DE SALGUEIRO, Portugal — The Epiphany celebrations in the Portuguese village of Vale de Salgueiro feature a tradition that each year causes an outcry among outsiders: Parents encouraging their children, some as young as 5, to smoke cigarettes.

Locals say the practice has been passed down for centuries as part of a celebration of life tied to the Christian Epiphany and the winter solstice — but nobody is sure what it symbolizes or exactly why parents buy the packs of cigarettes for their children and encourage them to take part.

The two-day celebrations, which start Friday and end Saturday with a Mass, include dancing around bonfires, a piper playing music and an elected “king” who distributes plentiful wine and snacks.

The legal age to purchase tobacco in Portugal is 18, but nothing prohibits parents from giving kids cigarettes and Portuguese authorities don’t intervene to stop the practice.

Guilhermina Mateus, a 35-year-old coffee shop owner, cites custom as the reason why she gives her daughter cigarettes.

Good on you Portugal! I get it- let the kids taste the forbidden fruit as youngsters so they grow up to be well adjusted adults. If you keep ‘em in a bubble they’ll end up rebelling later on. Besides, they’re only smoking on weekends after a few holy wines.

“I can’t explain why. I don’t see any harm in that because they don’t really smoke, they inhale and immediately exhale, of course,” Mateus said Saturday. “And it’s only on these days, today and tomorrow. They never ask for cigarettes again.”

See? They don’t even inhale. It’s like a supervised Rumspringa for toddlers. The only difference being that instead of bouncing back to normal after the binge, they lose vital cognitive function stunting both their mental and physical development. That is, if they were to inhale, which they don’t. They just take a drag for the taste and puff it out real quick. It’s harmless. If they were smart, they’d turn it into a tourist attraction. Remember that chubby kid in Indonesia?

People traveled from all over the world to see that little fatty crank hoons. He was up to two packs a day. Sure, he’s the only eight-year-old in the world who uses an oxygen tank, but he put that village on the map for a few months. These kids are doing the same. The risk is worth the reward, don’t listen to the haters Vale De Salgueiro. Keep doing you and things will pay off. Just not for the children.