The Charity Organization to combat smoking in Madinah, which took upon itself working for the noble cause of making the Prophet’s city the first in the world to be tobacco-free has concentrated much of its efforts on the young generation. It is indeed the young who represent the main front in the battle between the tobacco mafia, which includes a number of multinational companies, and those who realize that tobacco is the top threat to health at the individual and community levels throughout the world.
The tobacco companies spend billions of dollars every year on advertising and other ways of promoting their foul product. They realize that in order to maintain their levels of profit, they need to compensate for the five million people tobacco kills every year. The only way to achieve this is to tempt the young to smoke, because they know that less than one percent of all smokers start smoking after the age of 20. This means that they have to capture their victims before they are 18, or better still, before they are 15 or 16. Hence, in some Third World countries, they place some wicked advertisements saying that they do not encourage smoking before a person is 18. Such adverts are aimed at young ones who feel so eager to prove that they have matured and become independent. They want to do what adults do, and therefore, they will not wait until they are 18, but they will smoke now.
With such a wicked onslaught on young ones who will not appreciate that the cumulative health risks of tobacco smoking are very serious indeed, it is very important to counter the schemes of the tobacco companies. The Madinah Charitable Organization devised a strategy that hopes to build immunity against the lure of smoking among children and adolescents. The strategy addresses two age groups: 6-12 years and 12-18. The activities aimed at the younger group include a drawing notebook which children use for drawings that express the health risks associated with smoking. Thus when these children learn about the dangers of smoking, they develop ways of expressing such dangers in their own drawings. The organization has also developed cartoon spots explaining not only the risks to smokers, but also the risks of passive smoking, particularly those affecting young ones at home. A children’s magazine, Bara’im Tayyibah, is also published which couples the entertainment element with the educational one, putting the serious effects of smoking in focus. Rhymes and songs are also learned by children explaining what smoking causes of killer diseases.
The address to the older group is not only interactive, but also brings home to these young people the reality of the effects of smoking on health. Thus, a mobile exhibition includes articles showing how tobacco affects health in different ways. Among the most important exhibits are two real lungs, one of which is badly affected by cancer, while the other is healthy. A single look at these and comparing them is sufficient to turn any thinking person away from smoking. When this is coupled with an explanation that more than 90 percent of lung cancer cases throughout the world are due to tobacco smoking, the point is driven home to everyone: If you do not wish to develop lung cancer in future, do not smoke now or at any time.
A highly effective approach relies on the help received from smokers who have fallen victim to some of the 25 killer diseases that tobacco smoking causes. A pioneer experiment in this area was the voluntary effort made by a smoker who suffered throat cancer that led to the loss of his voice box. He was no longer able to speak without the aid of a special tool that he sticks to his neck to give sound to his words in a very queer manner. When he stood in front of school children explaining that all this was the result of his smoking, the danger this addiction involved was viewed in stark clarity.
What is important when undertaking such a huge task is to ensure that our efforts serve our overall goal. Hence, it is important to study and analyze the effects of the efforts of the Madinah Organization. Surveys were conducted to monitor such effects, and the analysis of the data gathered clearly shows that there is a big drop among school children who actually smoke among the older group, while there is a significant rise in the percentage of students who speak to colleagues who smoke or other smokers, explaining the dangers that smoking involves. While such results are gratifying to all those involved in the campaign aimed at making Madinah tobacco-free, those responsible for carrying the initiative through know that there is much more to be done before the noble vision becomes a reality.
But the Madinah organization is not content to work only within the Prophet’s city. It wants the city to be associated with a greater effort to spread the message throughout the Muslim world. Therefore, it is working for broader reach, hoping to give every pilgrim or visitor to the holy places a clear message, in their own languages, indicating that Islam does not approve of smoking. Indeed, tobacco smoking is forbidden according to the ruling given by a large number of Muslim scholars throughout the Muslim world. It is hoped that such an initiative will be implemented by the time the next pilgrimage season is due. In the meantime, the Madinah organization continues its steady efforts, trusting to God to crown its efforts to rid the Prophet’s city of the evil of tobacco smoking and all the killer diseases it causes.