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Smoking on the rise in absence of law

Dr Abdullah Al Badah, Supervisor-General, Tobacco Control Programme for the AGCC for Saudi Arabia, revealing details of the recently carried out Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), said that 80 per cent of the youth in the GCC favour a blanket ban on smoking while shisha was the most preferred form of tobacco.

The UAE GYTS on youth aged between 13 and15 years, includes data on prevalence of cigarette and other tobacco use as well as information on five determinants of tobacco use: access/availability and price, environmental tobacco smoke exposure (ETS), cessation, media and advertising, and school curriculum.

The GYTS was a school-based survey of 16,447 students in 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th grades conducted in 2005 and last updated in 2007.

As per the survey, over two in 10 students currently use any form of tobacco - 10.1 per cent of the students currently smoke cigarettes, nearly one-third currently use some other form of tobacco.

As much as 67.6 per cent who bought cigarettes in a store were not refused purchase because of their age, 20.8 per cent usually smoke at home and 39.5 per cent buy cigarettes in a store.

ETS exposure was found to be high - one-quarter of the students live in homes where others smoke, and one in three students is exposed to smoke around others outside of the home; one in four has a parent who smokes, and almost 10 per cent of the students have most or all friends who smoke. Over six in 10 students think smoke from others is harmful to them while two-thirds of the current smokers want to stop smoking.

Interestingly, one in 10 students was offered a free cigarette by a tobacco company representative, two in three students saw anti-smoking media messages in the past 30 days while seven in 10 students saw pro-cigarette ads in the past 30 days.

A two-stage cluster sample design was used to produce representative data for each of the four regions in UAE. The school response rate was 100 per cent, the student response rate was 93.1 per cent, and the overall response rate was 93.1 per cent. A total of 16,447 students participated in the UAE GYTS.

Attitude, too, was to be reckoned with as 28.4 per cent think boys and 17 per cent think girls who smoke have more friends, while 24.8 per cent think boys and 16.4 per cent think girls who smoke look more attractive.

Meanwhile, marking the World No Tobacco Day celebrations with a theme of Tobacco Free Youth, the UAE Ministry of Health (MoH) and Novartis Consumer Health (NCH) yesterday announced the winners of the first anti-smoking creative competition in the UAE.

Also, part of the event was a special recognition ceremony for 30 people, selected from among 350 who successfully completed the smoking cessation programme.

Minister of Health Humaid Mohammed Obaid Al Qutami gave away the awards to the winners.

The first prize winners in the young professionals and general public categories got Dh2,000 each while the first prize winner in the students’ category received Dh1,000. Second prize winners in all categories received a full-day spa voucher from LeSpa at The Palace Hotel, Down-town Burj Dubai.

On the occasion, the minister announced the opening of two more smoking cessation clinics in Ajman and Fujairah. “Two to three clinics will be added each year in different emirates to keep pace with the population,” he stated.

• UAE