Manama: A Saudi anti-smoking society, Naqa, has called for hiking the prices of cigarettes to help reduce the numbers of smokers in the kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia is witnessing alarming rise in the number of smokers, particularly among male and female students,” Mohammad Al Maayoof, the head of Naqa, said. “The average of male students who smoke reached 21 per cent in 2013, up from 15 per cent in 2003, while the number of female students has tripled from three per cent to nine per cent,” he said, quoted by local daily Al Eqtisadiya on Tuesday.

The activist attributed the increase to the higher levels of addictions, among major factors.

“The control over the nicotine level is rather weak, and today the smoker becomes addicted within one week. In the past, it took at least one month to notice any form of addiction. It is highly unfortunate that the monitoring system is rather weak and limited,” he said.

Solutions to tackle the situation include putting higher price tags on cigarettes, he said.

 

‘Open invitation’

“We suggest making smokers pay SR35 for a packet of cigarettes. Several advanced countries have applied this idea and with positive results. I can cite the example of the US where the number of smokers went down over 30 years after the prices of cigarettes were increased,” he said. “Saudi Arabia has some of the lowest prices for cigarettes in the world, and this is an open invitation that has to be stopped since higher prices mean that low-income people and students would be deterred from buying cigarettes or at least not as often as they wanted,” he said.

Anti-smoking campaigns in Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s heaviest consumers of cigarettes, have been on the rise,

Court data published in January last year indicated that Saudi women added divorce to the risks and dangers associated with smoking.

According to a report, more than 100 women in the Western city of Madinah have filed for divorce after their husbands refused or were unable to quit smoking.

“Courts in other cities in Saudi Arabia have also accepted cases filed by unhappy wives who wanted a divorce over the issue of smoking,” Okaz daily said. “Attempts by reconciliation committees to keep the spouses have failed to convince the wives who insisted on smoke-free husbands. The issue is now being addressed before the wedding and several young women in Madinah have rejected marriage proposals from men who smoked,” the daily said, citing a report on smoking-related divorces.

The report was prepared based on studies and research on the effects of smoking on marital relations.

The daily said that around 40 per cent of Saudi university graduates flatly rejected marriage to those who smoked.

 

Health concerns

The young women attributed their uncompromising decision not to “marry themselves into a smoking home” to health concerns about themselves, their future husbands and their future children.

A Saudi judge in 2012 ruled that women who suffered as a result of their husbands’ smoking were allowed to file for divorce.

In October 2012, Saudi judges set a new trend in the country by using cigarette smoking as a factor in child custody cases.

“A parent could now lose the custody case if he or she is proven to be a smoker,” a legal official said.

“Under the emerging trend, the smoking factor is now being treated like the drinking factor and can decide the outcome of the custody case,” he said.

The court would favour non-smoking parents and would factor smoking into custody cases to protect the child from the negative impact of passive smoking.

According to official figures, Saudi Arabia is home to six million smokers, including around 800,000 teenagers, mainly intermediate and high school students, and 600,000 women.

However, expatriates also account for a significant proportion of cigarette consumption in Saudi Arabia despite the increase in awareness campaigns about health risks related to smoking and passive smoking and the adoption of several legislative restrictions.