Manama: Authorities in the Saudi Red Sea resort of Jeddah have shut down 242 restaurants and cafés for serving shisha.
“They were closed for 24 hours as a first measure against them for breaking the law,” Basheer Abu Najm, the head of licensing and commercial monitoring in Jeddah, said. “A second violation would result in shutting down the facility for three days while the third would mean closing it for 15 days.”
Violators could eventually have their licences revoked, he said.
The 242 restaurants and cafés were also asked to pay a SR600 (Dh587) fine for not complying with the law banning smoking in closed and residential areas.
The shishas, the single or multi-stemmed instrument for smoking flavoured tobacco, were confiscated, local Arabic daily Al Madina reported on Sunday.
Abu Najm said that the drive against public smoking would continue and that more raids would be conducted against the facilities that served shishas to their customers despite the ban.
“Our aim is not shutting down restaurants and cafés, but to ban smoking in public places. Punitive measures and fines are imposed according to the regulations set out by the interior ministry. Those who have any form of complaint should contact the competent authorities,”
he added.
Jeddah, like all other cities in Saudi Arabia, has warned restaurants and cafés in residential areas that they would face stringent action if they failed to comply with the law banning serving shisha.
The former interior minister of Saudi Arabia, a world leading cigarette market, in summer reiterated the significance of applying a ban on smoking in public places.
Smoking at all ministries, government institutions and public places was banned under a royal decree and that the application of the ban was a necessity, the minister said.
The ban on cigarettes and shisha is extended to all closed places, including coffee shops, restaurants, shopping malls and crowded areas, he said.
There is a full ban on the sale of cigarettes to people under the age of 18, the directives said.
Shisha smoking culture is deeply embedded across the Middle East.
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 campaigns about health concerns, the adoption of several legislative restrictions and new views on the effects of passive smoking.
A Saudi topflight football team in August imposed heavy financial penalties on a group of players caught smoking shisha in a coffee shop in Abu Dhabi, where the squad was taking part in a friendly tournament.
A Saudi judge in summer ruled that women who suffered as a result of their husbands’ smoking were allowed to file divorce cases against them.
Last month, 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,” the expert who was not named told local Arabic daily Al Eqtisadiya.
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, he said.
