Smoking shisha, like eating and drinking, is of course a purely nighttime affair during Ramadan. But it often is during the rest of the year too, so chances are that during the holy month, with people socializing during the night hours, consumption will rise. It is thought to be rising in any event, popular as it is with younger people.
The results of research by a UK government department will therefore come as something of a shock to its devotees. It is that shisha smoking can be just as dangerous to health as cigarettes, if not more so. Many people imagine that shishas do not really count as smoking; it is one of the reasons it has caught on in countries like the UK among a younger crowd. This latest research, focused not on lung cancer but the amount of carbon monoxide inhaled, has found that shisha smoking results in carbon monoxide levels at least four to five times higher than among cigarette smokers, and in the worst cases, several hundred times higher. High carbon monoxide levels can result in unconsciousness and brain damage and, in the worst cases, death.
Will this news have an impact in the Kingdom? Realistically, none whatsoever outside places like Qassim where conservative religious views are hostile to such stimulants. Comparisons with the campaign against smoking suggest that will be so.
Despite a ban on smoking in government buildings and public places, on cigarette adverts on TV and government efforts to sue cigarette manufacturers for SR10 billion (the estimated costs of treating people suffering from smoking-related diseases), the campaign against tobacco smoking, so successful in the West, has had little effect in Saudi Arabia. Tobacco consumption continues to rise at 3 percent a year. It is estimated that one in 10 people in the Kingdom smokes cigarettes and that 22,000 die every year of lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases. Government efforts are clearly failing — although the ludicrously low cost of a packet of cigarettes may have something to do with it.
The British report is not the first damning study on shisha smoking; a French government report two years ago found that one shisha produced between 27 to 102 times the carbon tar of a cigarette and up to 52 times the carbon monoxide. Despite that and even after GCC moves to ban shishas in public places (Dubai municipality did so in March), consumption is rising. In the UAE, doctors recently reported more women smoking shishas; there is no reason to imagine things are very different in the Kingdom although there are no statistics.
That is part of the problem. People in this part of the world will simply ignore studies carried elsewhere. They do not see them as their concern; it is not their patch of the wood. It would be different if there were a report on the dangers of smoking in Saudi Arabia. That leads to another point: Why is it left to countries such as the UK and France to undertake research in shisha smoking? Shisha is part of Arab culture, not British or French culture. The answer, of course, is that there is no great tradition, let alone the facilities, of undertaking research into social, medical or any other issues here. That will change as new universities open. But it is long overdue.
