The World Health Organization's “World No Tobacco Day” focused this year on the lengths to which tobacco companies are going to interfere with the WHO campaign, which maintains that tobacco is one of the leading preventable causes of death, killing six million people a year, 10 percent of whom have been exposed to second-hand smoke. Classically, while the number of smokers is decreasing in the developed world, the growth markets for cigarette makers are in Third World countries. This is not, however, the case here in the Kingdom. There are currently some six million Saudi smokers, including around 700,000 females and 800,000 teenagers. This figure is projected to rise to 10 million in the next eight years with the amount of money spent on tobacco products passing SR21 billion a year. For people in Saudi Arabia to spend in dollar terms, $5.5 billion on smoking is mind-boggling. It is the equivalent of the insured loss to life and property in the Caribbean and the United States during last August's devastating Hurricane Irene, or the amount of money that Bangladesh expects to earn from oil discovered last month in two old gas fields. In a very sage analysis, Minister of Health Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeah, yesterday explained the way in which tobacco companies link smoking to sports, physical prowess and well-being. Smoking is about cool lifestyle choices. Perhaps most insidiously, given the steady rise in young female smokers, advertisements play upon the supposed liberating effects of smoking as the way in which it can give young women the idea that they are in control. Smoking is presented as both enjoyable and safe, says the health minister, by tobacco firms that use pseudo-science and statistics. The anti-tobacco lobby is now demanding that the government do more in terms of health education and campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of smoking. Such programs certainly do have an effect, but with young people the impact is all too often the opposite of what is intended. By issuing solemn warnings about the hazards of smoking, all around the world, health authorities have been unwittingly legitimizing smoking in the eyes of the young. Puffing on a cigarette has been a way for youths to assert their independence and cock a snook at authority. Most people, however young, know of the dangers of smoking. Awareness campaigns and education programs are unlikely by themselves to reduce smoking. International experience shows that this happens more reliably with advertising curbs, restrictions on tobacco sales and most importantly, smoking bans in public places. The Kingdom already has smoking bans. Smoking was for instance forbidden in airports. For a few days the ban was enforced fitfully by officials, but most passengers ignored instructions to extinguish their cigarettes. So in the end the officials gave up. There are similar bans in shopping malls and restaurants, virtually all of them ignored. If the authorities really want to reduce smoking significantly, enforcing existing regulations, while also cutting back advertising, have got to be two obvious moves. Otherwise much of the money spent on education and awareness programs is being wasted. __
