A few months ago, Birjis Al-Birjis, a former adviser at Saudi Aramco, tweeted that SR30 million was being spent daily on cigarettes in the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia imports SR3 billion worth of cigarettes each year. The biggest exporter of cigarettes to the Kingdom is Germany, which is also the country where a large number of Saudis travel to receive medical treatment. In addition to the ugliness and foul odors that emanate from five trillion cigarette butts each year, cigarettes contain toxic chemicals which kill living organisms, such as fish. This is because the plastic and cellulose compounds that are in cigarettes butts do not disintegrate. They exist longer than the ordinary human being lives on earth. This poses a great hazard to the environment. Many children and teenagers have developed the habit of smoking. These young people do not understand the hazards of smoking. Because of this, many countries have realized that they need to intervene to combat this problem by imposing conditions on cigarette advertisements and adding warnings on the outside of cigarette packets. Other countries have raised the price of cigarettes and have banned the sale of cigarettes to young people. This is aside from the well-known awareness campaigns that use pictures of black lungs with holes in them because of smoking side by side with images of the lungs of a healthy person. It seems that parents who attempt to prevent their children from smoking often only cause their offspring to become more determined to smoke. Young people smoke because of peer pressure rather than a desire to imitate adults. This is the reason why smoking among the young is increasing while it is decreasing among those who are older. Adults who attempt to frighten the young by saying that smoking is harmful to health, causes wrinkles, change one's voice, and leads to cancer and impotence are not doing themselves any favors. The young do not listen. I think that every time an adult tries to frighten a young person, the youngster will only want to smoke more. The young desire to smoke not because they know it is harmful but because it makes them excited and they think they are being trendy. What is most important is that they smoke because they are rebelling and know that their parents will not approve. The ideal solution to stop people from smoking is to raise the price of cigarettes so that they cannot afford to smoke. The World Bank believes that raising the price of a packet of cigarettes by 10 percent would lead to a 4 percent drop in the demand for cigarettes in countries with high incomes and 8 percent in countries with medium or low incomes. I, therefore, believe there might be a need to raise the price of cigarettes from time to time, as people with low incomes, especially children and teenagers, respond most to an increase in prices.
