Smoke and mirrors

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World No Tobacco Day brought with it a flurry of anti-smoking activity from the Middle East's health ministries. Is the region finally serious about kicking the habit, or is there still a lighter at the end of the tunnel?

Smoking, say experts, is on the decline in developed countries. By 2010, world tobacco demand will have peaked, according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

So far, so good - global efforts to reduce smoking are patently making an impact. But unfortunately for the Middle East, its nations are considered to be developing, rather than developed. And in developing countries, tobacco consumption is still very much on the rise.

Nevertheless, on May 31 the region played its part in encouraging smoking cessation. The legal age for smokers to buy and consume tobacco products was raised to 20 in the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia implemented a ban on all TV advertising of cigarettes. Bahrain's Health Ministry put its weight behind a of smoking cessation clinics to mark the occasion.

Even Qatar put up an anti-smoking stand in a mall for three days. Whether this will be enough to stand in the way of big tobacco is a moot point - it won't be: similar, sustained campaigns in the West took years before bearing fruit.

What's more important for now is whether or not 2008 will mark the region's genuine acceptance of the need for aggressive anti-smoking tactics; whether beneath the veneer of publicity, governments are truly serious about curbing the region's growing addiction to smoking.

The young lungs

Health ministries are not helped by the fact that gathering smoking data in the Middle East can be like grasping at dirty air. Yet if anyone's figures are to be believed, it would be the World Health Organisation's (WHO).

The WHO lists Yemen as leading the region in the prevalence of smoking among adult males, at 60% - compared to 48% in Jordan, 46% in Lebanon and an impressively low 18.3% in the UAE.

A closer look at the UAE's statistics, however, reveals that the emirates face the same problem as the rest of the region - their smokers are getting younger and the future burden on the healthcare system is increasing dramatically.

The WHO's numbers claim that in the UAE, 42% of 17-year-old males smoke, while, staggeringly, 24.3% of boys aged between 13 and 15 years have also developed the habit.

An independent survey of students in the country found that 40% of those polled had their first cigarette before the age of 13.

The theme of 2008's World No Tobacco Day was a 'Tobacco-Free Youth'. The accompanying literature warns legislators how the tobacco industry targets the young through advertising, promotion and sponsorship tactics.

Whether or not direct advertising and marketing is responsible for the Middle East's latest generation of smokers, it seems clear by its previous actions that the tobacco industry does.

No smoke without power

The first volume of the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean's report on the "tactics and strategies used by the tobacco industry...in the countries of the GCC specifically, to promote [smoking]", entitled Voice of Truth, makes for demoralising reading.

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