JEDDAH: The majority of smokers who took part in a recent survey said they started practicing the unhealthy habit as a result of the influence of friends.
The Charitable Society for Combating Smoking, which conducted the survey on 1,000 smokers in Riyadh, said 71.9 percent or 719 smokers blamed peer pressure for adopting the dangerous habit.
Some of the participants (8.4 percent) said it was the family atmosphere that made them smokers while 5.9 percent blamed work pressure for smoking, which is the main reason for lung cancer and other chronic illnesses. The survey also showed that the majority of smokers in the Kingdom are unmarried young men and women with one-third of them (30.7 percent) being students.
The rate of smokers among government employees is considerably high. They represent 40.3 percent of people who took part in the survey.
Suleiman Al-Sabiy, secretary-general of the society, cautioned parents to keep a watch on their children to prevent them from being influenced by their smoker-friends. His warning is important as 73.9 percent of those surveyed were aged between 10 and 20.
“It’s very painful to see our children smoke in the streets. Smoking may encourage these young men and women to take drugs,” he said quoting results of another study conducted by the society. About 90 percent of youths in a Riyadh reformatory said smoking paved the way for them to become drug addicts.
Al-Sabiy urged authorities to include a lesson on the harmful effects of smoking in the school curriculum to discourage children from adopting the habit.
A study conducted among Saudi women in Riyadh showed that 30 percent of businesswomen, 60 percent of doctors and 10 percent of university students in the capital city are smokers. The study said there was a 15 percent increase in smoking among Saudi women, especially those living in the big cities of Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam.
“I have been smoking since I started doing business 12 years ago. Many of my relatives, including my husband, tried to convince me to stop smoking,” said one businesswoman who some days smokes 60 cigarettes.
According to a report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 600 million people around the world suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “Smoking causes the death of four million people in the world, including 22,000 in Saudi Arabia, annually,” says WHO.
