Cigarette firms ‘enticing youth’

MADINAH: A Saudi anti-smoking charity society has accused cigarette companies of trying to increase the number of tobacco addicts in the Kingdom through tempting promotion techniques.
“A particular tobacco company sells cigarettes on the Saudi market with a message on one side of its cigarette packet saying ‘Free flow: telling a story of creativity'," Suleiman Al-Sabi, secretary-general of anti-smoking charity society Naqaa, told Al-Eqtisadiah daily.
The message suggests to an unsuspecting youth that smoking that brand of cigarettes is associated with triggering a stream of creative ideas.
Any promotional act is an explicit violation of the royal order banning direct or indirect promotion on any type of cigarette packet, Al-Sabi said, adding that a tobacco company recently offered free samples of cigarettes to young people in Riyadh and Jeddah.
New types of promotional techniques emerged after the Ministry of Health ordered that cigarette packets should carry warning images about the risks involved in smoking.
Another marketing ploy adopted by cigarette companies to sidestep the promotional ban was to claim they were marketing ‘light’ or ‘medium’ cigarettes.