Smoking bans are seen in this part of the world as a Western affair — a view borne out by the fact that while they are now the norm in much of Europe, most US states and other Westernized counties, the opposite is the case in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In Asia, Westernized Singapore and Hong Kong predictably have bans as does Iran, although it is rarely enforced there, while Bhutan stands out for being the first country in the world to opt for a total ban on tobacco sales, the aim being to become totally tobacco-free. But the tide is shifting in the non-Western world. India has tightened its controls on smoking (including a ban on smoking in Bollywoood movies) and is considering further moves. China is also looking at controls and has announced a ban on smoking in Beijing during the Olympics. And this week, a public-smoking ban came into effect in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
It is only a matter of time before bans become commonplace worldwide. So what about Saudi Arabia? Is it going to happen here? The Kingdom has one of the highest per capita tobacco consumption levels in the world. The Ministry of Health estimates that six million people — mainly men but 600,000 women as well — smoke 15 billion cigarettes a year. That works out at 2,130 cigarettes a year per smoker or just over two packets a week. But that is an average; many smoke far more than that — with the result that 23,000 people die each year from smoking-related diseases. That is a staggering third of all deaths a year (the death rate in the Kingdom for 2007 is estimated at 2.55 per thousand of population). That compares to one in every ten deaths from smoking-related causes worldwide. This cannot be allowed to continue. To make matters worse, the numbers of young people smoking is rising.
The government wants to encourage people not to smoke. So far, however, the main focus has been on anti-smoking campaigns in the hope that people will voluntarily change their habits and that businesses and institutions make their premises smoking-free. But the experience elsewhere in the world is that this does work without an enforced official ban. Certainly the authorities are under increasing pressure to introduce one. There are growing voices in the Health Ministry for such a move, indeed there are plans to start with such a ban in the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah where there are already tobacco sales bans. Strongly campaigning for a national public smoking ban is the Charitable Society to Combat Smoking. Its first objective is to make Jeddah smoking-free and has started an awareness campaign to that end. Externally, the World Health Organization is pushing hard for a ban in every country — and Saudi Arabia has in fact ratified its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO CFTC) and only last week attended the convention’s conference in Bangkok.
A ban, then, looks to be not a matter of “if” but “when”. If that saves 20,000 or so Saudi lives a year, it cannot come a moment too soon.
