Many people fall ill and die due to smoking. The number of people who die from smoking is higher than those who die from inhaling other poisonous materials. This is an established fact and nobody doubts it. The use of tobacco around the world has increased by 75 percent over the past two decades. Protecting non-smokers against secondary smoke requires major changes in the way people treat and deal with smokers. This will also alleviate the direct harm of smoking on smokers themselves. Some 2.5 million people die of smoking every year across the world. In other words, a person dies every 13 seconds because of smoking. Nevertheless and strangely enough, humans consume $100 billion worth of tobacco a year. Some studies put the cost of tobacco advertisements around the world at $3 billion a year. A World Health Organization report showed that $50 million would be enough to sustain five million children in the Third World who would normally have died because they did not have access to vaccines against illnesses such as polio, whooping cough and diphtheria. If industrial countries suffer from major problems because of tobacco use despite their huge resources, the suffering of people in Third World countries, where illnesses are rife, is greater and more horrific. The American Cancer Society (ACS) said cigarettes account for 83 percent of lung cancer, noting that 90 percent of cancer patients die within five years after realizing they have the illness. The society further called for a complete ban on tobacco advertisements. The percentage of people smoking has annually increased by 2.1 percent; this is larger than the increase in the world's population. It is also worth mentioning that around 2.5 million people die of smoking every year after developing heart and lung diseases due to smoking. Lung cancer is caused by too much smoking and accounts for 85 percent of such cases. Smoking is the cause of two dangerous lung diseases: bronchitis and emphysema (a disease that causes the enlargement of air spaces in the lungs and the destruction of tissues). Around 52,000 people die of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases every year. A study conducted by Egypt and the World Health Organization showed that 449 Egyptians died of lung cancer, 7,939 of chronic bronchitis, and 6,249 of angina—all because of smoking. Health professionals agree that 90 percent of cancer cases are caused by people smoking, which also accounts for 75 percent of chronic bronchitis and 25 percent of angina. Dr. Muhammad Al-Bar has written in his book “Lost Business” that lung cancer has significantly increased in Egypt and was the second greatest cause of deaths in the country following bladder cancer. That is why Egypt has the largest number of bladder and lung cancer cases in the world. Measuring and calculating these losses is complicated. Third World countries do not have statistics about the number of people who have died because of smoking, how many people use tobacco products, to what extent smoking accounts for fires, how much governments spend on healthcare to treat smokers, how many workers do not report to work every year because of smoking-related illnesses, etc. Our research centers and universities should provide us with these statistics. The Kingdom, which has played a pioneering role in fighting smoking, should intensify anti-smoking campaigns and ban tobacco advertisements in conjunction with other Gulf countries. Smoking should be banned in malls, airports and in the workplace. Members of the public should be educated about the dangers of smoking.
