RIYADH, 3 July — New anti-smoking signs have been erected next to most traffic lights on the major streets of Riyadh by the national anti-smoking campaign as part of a campaign to encourage people to quit smoking.
The campaign is sponsored by the Charitable Anti-Smoking Society and was launched by a Royal Decree in 1999. Arrangements have since been made to initiate the campaign at the start of the school year in 2001 and observe it for the next three years.
The campaign is sponsored and financed by organizations and individuals and will be held in the Central, Western, and the Eastern regions of the Kingdom.
The Kingdom held its first anti-smoking campaign in 1984 with the government prohibiting smoking in all ministries, government and public institutions. It also banned tobacco advertising in the local press and demanded that all tobacco importers add a warning label written in Arabic on every cigarette pack.
Since tobacco marketing greatly increases the percentage of smokers, the campaign has attracted the support of newspapers, magazines and satellite channels. Some forms of advertisements used for warnings against smoking are derived from the tobacco campaigns themselves. One of the signs which is often seen in public places shows two cowboys reminiscent of Marlboro advertisements with one telling the other that he is suffering from cancer. Advertising attempts to project smoking as a rite of passage to attaining maturity and freedom.
Many young people are misled and are deceived into taking up smoking. Tobacco companies see this as a lucrative market for using persuasive ads to lure young people to become smokers.
The campaign is organizing enlightenment lectures, seminars, exhibitions and media competitions for both the young and adults. The activities will take place in malls, hospitals, schools, colleges, restaurants and other public places.
The campaign has also distributed a variety of brochures and set up a hotline to answer public inquiries. Mobile clinics will be provided to help introduce smokers to the most effective techniques to help quit smoking.
The campaign will publicly acknowledge the cities which exhibit outstanding efforts in preventing smoking and reward all the establishments prohibiting smoking in their buildings and refraining from selling tobacco.
The latest statistics indicate that the Kingdom with a population of 22 million has almost 5.5 million smokers. More than 15 billion cigarettes are sold annually. The charitable society is urging the public to participate in reducing this figure.
