Tobacco.org

Laos' hill tribes resist dropping old habits 

A 6-year-old boy with a cigarette dipping from his bottom lip lolls out a window. Below, girls huddle around a smoldering bamboo pipe, grasping it like a prized toy and taking turns to inhale sugar-laced tobacco smoke.

At Ban Kan Don village, in the southern province of Sekong, almost every child old enough to walk has a nicotine habit. Small boys wander barefoot with cigarettes wedged between tiny fingers. Hacking smokers' coughs rattle through flimsy bamboo shacks.

"It's just like you are hungry for food," Sao Noi, a sweet-faced 12-year-old from the Katu tribe, says about the addiction she picked up at age 7. "The tobacco smells nice."

As with many hill tribes in southern Laos, some of the ways of the Katu are bad for their health. But the tribal people cling to their habits as part of their struggle to preserve timeless traditions they fear are being threatened by government resettlement programs.

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