Sabbi, Secretary General of the Anti-smoking Charity, has said that the time has come to enforce regulations to fight smoking and ban it in public places. Al-Sabbi said that laws studied by the Shoura Council and Council of Ministers six years ago laid out 20 articles, including banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone under 18 years of age, outlawing the manufacture and promotion of cigarettes, and banning smoking in public places. l-Sabbi said that one of the most notable conclusions coming out of last week's International Clean-Air Forum and its “Riyadh Declaration” was the need to put the six-year-old regulations into effect. The Riyadh Declaration recommended that the government adopt a local, regional and international policy to fight tobacco. Al-Sabbi said the Kingdom topped the list of tobacco importers in the Muslim world, followed by Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Morocco and Egypt. Dr. Fahd Al-Khudhairi, Carcinogens Consultant at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, said that the latest statistics showed there were over 10,000 cancer sufferers as a result of smoking in the Kingdom. Al-Khudhairi said that 90 percent of lung cancer sufferers were smokers, as were 80 percent of throat cancer sufferers, and added that each patient costs the state between one and four million Riyals in health care treatment, depending on the case.
