A STORY was recently published in the media on the increasing number of smokers among medical students at medical colleges in Saudi universities. It was reported that some 30 percent of future doctors smoke. I have, in the past, seen doctors smoking in public, and it is clear that such doctors would not hesitate to smoke in their own offices in hospitals. I would not be surprised if they greet patients inside their offices with an ashtray full of cigarette butts or with cigarettes in their hands. We will most likely see more doctors who smoke in the future simply because so many medical students already smoke. These students may be smoking in hallways inside medical colleges and throwing their cigarette butts on the floor. How could a doctor who smokes give advice to a sick patient and ask him or her to stop smoking because an x-ray shows how the patient's lungs have turned black because of nicotine? Such doctors are in fact sick themselves. A smart person will not spend money to ruin his health. Awareness campaigns on the danger of smoking have failed. Even those campaigns that use strong images against smoking have failed. One campaign uses the picture of a father who is holding his infant in one hand and a cigarette in the other with the infant saying do not kill me father. Unfortunately, such pictures fail to make an impact on those addicted to nicotine.
