Saudi Arabia anti-smoking drive stresses effects on health, beauty

Campaign highlights negative effect smoking has on lungs, teeth and how it creates black pockmarks on the face

Female students in Saudi Arabia are being advised to avoid smoking in order not to ruin their looks.

A campaign launched by the Tobacco and Narcotics Combat Charity Society (Kafa) in the Red Sea city of Jeddah told the students that smoking was bad for their health and for their appearance.

Under the ‘Do Not Spoil Your Beauty’ campaign, the girls are given presentations on the negative effects of cigarettes on their lungs as well as on their looks.

The campaign explained how smoking was not ladylike and how it affected the teeth and created black pockmarks on their faces, which ruined their physical beauty.

‘Need for strong action’

Salwa Saruji, the head of the women’s section at Kafa (Enough, in Arabic) warned that the number of women taking up smoking and going to cafes was increasing and needed strong action, Saudi news site Sabq reported on Monday.

Saruji did not give specific figures, but official figures indicate that around 600,000 women smoke cigarettes in Saudi Arabia, making up one tenth of the total smoking population estimated at six million smokers.

The figure includes a significant proportion of expatriates and intermediate and high school students.

Female smokers in the kingdom usually puff their first cigarettes when they are 15 years old.

Smoking among women is more prevalent in cities than in rural areas.

In 2013, a Saudi husband divorced his wife just three months after their marriage after he found a cigarette inside her bag.

A relative of the wife said that her husband became furious and decided to divorce her despite her pleas and her claims that she did not smoke and that the cigarette was not hers.

Attempts to have the husband change his mind over the issue and to accept reconciliation failed.