Saudis told no advantage in e-cigs
People in Saudi Arabia have been told by the executive director of the Anti-Smoking Association (Naqa), Dr. Mohammed bin Sulaiman Al-Mayouf, that electronic cigarettes cause as much harm to users and those around them as do traditional tobacco cigarettes, according to a story in the Arab News.
Al-Mayouf was quoted as saying also that there was ‘great need to change the common perception among people that nicotine in electronic cigarettes is less concentrated’.
He cited the World Health Organization as having issued ‘serious warnings’ against electronic cigarettes.
However, many tobacco control advocates believe that nicotine is not in itself harmful and that vaping electronic cigarettes is hugely less risky than is smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes.
Public Health England, an executive body of the UK Department of Health, has published a report saying that the use of electronic cigarettes is 95 percent safer than is smoking cigarettes and that electronic cigarettes are an important tool to help smokers quit altogether.
The Arab News story opened with Al-Mayouf saying that studies had shown that 6.1 percent of Saudis smoked shisha.
He said that this was an ‘alarming indicator’ of the power of the tobacco companies’ propaganda, which portrayed smoking as a sign of urbanization and self-assertion.
“It makes it easier to convince adolescent girls to take up the habit, especially when it is propagated by the media, mostly soap operas that are very popular among them,” he said.
Studies, said Al-Mayouf, had indicated that one session of shisha smoking lasted two to three hours, which was equivalent to the time taken to smoke about 25 cigarettes, and that one cigarette contained 4,000 toxic and 43 carcinogenic substances.
Al-Mayouf said shisha smoking was one contributor to lung, bladder and stomach cancer. It also contributed to lower birth weights, to gum and throat diseases, and to the spread of tuberculosis when one shisha was used by several people.
‘Many sites promote the electronic shisha, arguing that it helps gradually quit smoking, but this is a delusional solution and profitable propaganda spread by tobacco companies and the marketers of electronic cigarettes, against which the WHO has issued serious warnings,’ the story said.
‘Al-Mayouf stressed that e-cigarettes harm the smokers and those around them, the so-called passive smokers, as much as regular cigarettes, so there is great need to change the common perception among people that nicotine in electronic cigarettes is less concentrated.’