Selma Roth Saudi Gazette It's been more than a year since the municipality in Jeddah banned smoking of cigarettes and shisha in restaurants and cafés. Although the Ministry of Interior had already ordered a ban on smoking in enclosed public places to be implemented from July 2012, and Riyadh as well as other cities had barred shisha to the outskirts of the city long before, Jeddah finally followed suit in October that year. With many skeptics doubting whether cafés and restaurant owners would comply with the new regulation, given the city's deeply-rooted hubbly-bubbly culture and the revenues obtained from tobacco. However, more than a year later, the ban is still in place and inspections to ensure establishments are obeying the law are abundant. Authorities are resisting the pressure from café owners – some of whom stated they lost 80 percent of revenues, while others had to shut down, not only because of the profits from shisha alone, but also because customers used to stay longer when they could smoke and would order drinks and foods. Smoking shisha “was a way to meet and sit for a couple of hours with friends,” explained the owner of Vertigo Café, who had to close doors in September this year. But, apart from lost businesses, has the smoking ban achieved anything else? Is it successful in what it was enforced for? In other words, has it made us any healthier? For 31-year-old Aied Garni, who works for a large company at Jeddah Islamic Port, the ban affected him, but did not lead to a healthier lifestyle: “Before, I could go to a café behind my house to smoke shisha, but now I cannot easily find a place. I have to drive very far.” As a result, Garni now often chooses his home to relax with the water pipe after work. This is exactly why some café owners state the ban is useless. While losing customers and, thus, revenue, people will not give up their unhealthy habits, they say, claiming that the ban led to an increased number of parents smoking at home, affecting their offspring by making them passive smokers. However, Garni says he created a special room to smoke shisha so as to not affect the health of his wife and children. He even thinks the law may have helped people to become healthier, not because it is more difficult to find a place to smoke, but because the prices have increased tremendously. “Before, there were around 200 cafes (that served shisha) in Jeddah, now, you will only find 20 or 30, so the prices have gone up.” Tawfeeq Ali, who has been smoking shisha and cigarettes for only two years, says the ban did not make him change his new habits. Although most cafes and restaurants do not allow smoking anymore, “some cafes turn a blind eye if you're in the men's section – maybe because they smoke themselves,” he told Saudi Gazette. The 30-year-old GIS web developer thinks that people who used to smoke shisha on a regular basis may be smoking less now, as most shisha joints are on the outskirts of Jeddah, and going there on a regular basis is time consuming, while it is also a hassle to set up a shisha at home. However, those who really like shisha will still smoke at parks or at the Corniche, he thinks, while many women smoke at their homes and do not mind going to shisha shops full of men to buy various flavors. “I guess the ban does not affect them.” The recent increase in price did not encourage Ali to stop smoking either, he said, “A maximum of SR10 a packet is still cheap for many. I didn't see anyone stop smoking because of the ban.” He thinks the ban is a good initiative, but it needs to be enforced more strictly by police and not by government inspectors. A price hike of perhaps 250 to 300 percent on cigarettes could also be more effective, Ali believes. Studies confirm this. One large study published by the World Health Organization (WHO) earlier this year, concluded that increasing taxes throughout the world would prevent 3.5 million smoking-attributable deaths each year. Between 2007 and 2010, a total of 41 countries, including Turkey, Pakistan and Italy, introduced tobacco control measures. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health also recently concluded that the 100 percent increase in prices had not achieved the desired result and announced a smoking ban and fines for all public places would be soon enforced. For Khaled Fawaz, a 35-year old retail unit manager at a sports marketing company, the ban really helped him accept the idea that he had to stop smoking cigarettes. “I was becoming a social outcast and wasn't able to really spend time with family and friends whenever we went out,” he said, stating that most of his friends in the Kingdom do not smoke and he started to hate having to go out alone every time he needed a shot of nicotine. Fawaz, who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day but no shisha, said he now feels great for the first time in 17 years. But Sioux Masters, who smokes shisha once to twice a week, thinks people cannot be encouraged to stop smoking by enforcing a ban, “Smoking is mostly governed by personal choice, not public pressure,” the 54-year-old nurse stated. Her habits did not change, and although she agrees with a no-smoking policy in restaurants, there should be a separate area for smokers, she opines. Perhaps it is a little early to state whether the smoking ban has made us healthier or not. Only one year has passed, and for many people smoking is a persistent and ingrained habit that is not easily abandoned. However, even if people did not cease smoking cigarettes or shisha, most non-smokers are happy they do not need to inhale the fumes of other people's addiction anymore. Smoke-free restaurants are also a big advantage for parents who do not want to expose their children to cigarettes and shisha. An additional difficulty in determining whether the ban has made us healthier is that no health stats about the effects have been carried out yet in the Kingdom. However, studies from other countries, as the aforementioned WHO study, are promising. One review on the impact of the law in England, that banned smoking in workplaces and enclosed public spaces, carried out by the University of Stirling and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, concluded that the law had had “a significant impact”. The 2012 study – carried out five years after the smoking laws had been introduced – stated that “Results show benefits for health, changes in attitudes and behavior and no clear adverse impact on the hospitality industry”. According to the WHO study, anti-smoking measures, such as higher taxes on tobacco products, bans on adverts and controls on lighting up in public places, could prevent tens of millions of premature deaths across the world. All in all, the Kingdom appears to be on the right track to make the population healthier. The nationwide shisha and smoking ban in cafés and restaurants as well as the price hike on tobacco products were good initial steps to encourage people to stop smoking and prevent passive smoking. The recently submitted draft law from the Ministry of Health that proposes to ban smoking in all public places and also calls for penalties in case of violation is a good next step. If the country at least succeeds in protecting nonsmokers and children from the harms of tobacco smoke as well as in dissuading teenagers to take up the habit, it will at least make those groups a whole lot healthier.
