Who is to blame for the large number of smokers among the Kingdom’s adolescents? The available data on the number of Saudi boys and girls who smoke should sound an alarm bell. Are our schools which ought to serve as bastions of moral values and good habits failing to fulfill their role? Can schools alone withstand the onslaught of increasingly immoral temptations which appear in our media? How shocking is a recent newspaper report which stated that 27 percent of the girls in intermediate school are smokers! In addition, the report noted that 50 percent of their teachers are also smokers.
A study by the Ministry of Education covering 752 students in Dammam’s government schools revealed that 30 percent of intermediate and secondary school students are smokers. As many as 90 percent of the smoking children admitted that they began the habit at an even earlier age. The study also showed that 55 percent of students in their final year of secondary school do not realize the health hazards of nicotine. Sixty-six percent of the smokers participating in the study were between 12 and 17 years.
The study emphasizes the urgency with which we should undertake serious schemes to stop an impending calamity from the addiction to nicotine.
But before embarking on any effort to stop the calamity, we must first discuss the primary responsibility for the spread of this evil; it would be unfair to blame only schools teachers or family though obviously they have to shoulder some responsibility. We must identify the basic cause of the spread of the evil habit. It is the direct result of the freedom given to the tobacco sellers in the Kingdom. A free market economy does not care for people’s health; its concern is making money. The tobacco importers and their foreign collaborators are doing their best to earn enormous profits while, at the same time, ignoring the fact that they are endangering peoples’ health.
It is a sad fact that the price of a cigarette in the Kingdom is the cheapest in the world while the profit from its sale is the highest. We must admit that our campaigns and strategies to fight smoking have failed miserably. The failure was basically because we did not realize the powerful hold of the evil habit on our younger generation. The spread of tobacco addiction is very great while stopping its use is a big problem among adolescents in comparison to other age groups.
The efforts at governmental and non-governmental levels to combat smoking have never been strong enough to counter the challenges of the international tobacco conglomerates and their local agents. The administrative will to put up a strong fight against the tobacco menace is also lacking. The authorities have not done enough to stop the growth of tobacco sales. Heavy taxes should be levied on cigarettes sold in the Kingdom; the cost of smoking here should be as high as it is in any advanced country. The extra revenue from the sales could be used for treating tobacco-related diseases and for establishing centers to promote non-smoking.
18 August 2002
