An Arab Addiction : Still Puffing With Passion in Mideast

AMMAN, Jordan — In the darkest hours of Beirut, long after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks and a rash of kidnapings of Westerners, one American still walked tall in the Lebanese capital. Looming over the Rue Hamra, the city’s once glamorous shopping street, was a 30-foot-high billboard of the Marlboro Man.

That an icon of American culture survived in the maelstrom of Middle East politics was less a testament to the Lebanese love of Americans than their seemingly insatiable appetite for foreign cigarettes.

It is a taste shared by most of the Arab world.

Coffee, Tea and Cigarettes

At the home of a prosperous Palestinian couple here in the Jordanian capital--a couple obviously proud of their status and sophistication--the hostess recently performed the rituals of Arab hospitality: heavily sweetened tea in small glasses, then cups of bitter Turkish coffee and a huge bowl of freshly opened cigarette packages.

“You must try one,” she said sweetly, as if she were passing around hors d’oeuvres.

Bucking the backlash against tobacco in the Western world, the Middle East remains a smoker’s special preserve. There are few places where smoking is absolutely prohibited, and in many places it is actively encouraged.

Although cigarette smoking was rare in the region only 30 years ago, it has now passed into the culture. When many Arab families hold a wake, for example, it is virtually obligatory that the guests smoke as a sign of respect.

“In terms of consciousness about the dangers of smoking, the Arab world is at the level of the United States in 1964,” said Dr. Zuhair Malhas, a former minister of health in Jordan who now campaigns against smoking.

Walk-In Humidors

His is an uphill battle. Passengers on many Middle Eastern airline flights--even in no-smoking sections--are still handed small packages of complimentary cigarettes. The better supermarkets in the Arab world would consider themselves derelict if they lacked walk-in humidors for the Cuban cigars next to the imported kiwi fruit and Belgian endive.

The interiors of taxis and buses are often wreathed in thick blue smoke from smoking passengers and drivers. Head waiters are appalled when customers complain about smoke--because it might offend the smoker.

A recent visitor to the office of Dr. Suleiman Qubain, Jordan’s director of primary health care and the official in charge of the government’s two-year-old anti-smoking program, found Qubain puffing on a cigarette.

“I’m very embarrassed,” Qubain said. “I usually smoke alone in my office so that nobody is bothered. I suppose this does not look very good.”

At another interview, Dr. Mohammed Maabreh, the Jordan Health Ministry’s “chest disease specialist,” also was smoking.

In fact, according to anti-smoking campaigner Malhas, a survey conducted by the University of Jordan showed that 51% of Jordanian doctors are smokers.

Poor Role Models

“The worst thing about doctors smoking is not so much that they ruin their own health but that other people see them smoking,” Malhas said. “It really defeats our efforts.”

The same Jordanian survey, conducted in 1982, showed that 63% of the population smokes regularly--from 38% of all homemakers to 89% of all car mechanics. Among young people in Jordan, 27% of 10th graders and 45% of university students are smokers.

Statistics about smoking in the region are not easy to find. A survey by the World Health Organization showed that Cyprus has the highest per-capita cigarette consumption in the world, followed by Greece.

In Egypt, a report published by the economic weekly Al Ahram Iktissadi said that 6.5 million of Cairo’s 10 million people are smokers, consuming a total of 46 billion cigarettes--the equivalent of a pack a day per smoker.

The report, which was based on a state-funded study, noted that people in both urban and rural areas of Egypt spend 5% of their income on tobacco--but only 2% to 3% for health care.

‘Startling’ Disease Rate

In Kuwait, recent research by the country’s Ministry of Health showed that the largest incidence of cancer in the population is lung cancer. One doctor called the result “startling,” considering how recently cigarette smoking came to the Arab world.

Cigarette smoking has been popular in the region only for the past 25 years or so. Before that, tobacco was mostly consumed through water pipes in cafes or at home.

Until the 1960s, the strict religious tenets of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam prohibited smoking anywhere in that country except on the “street of infidels,” where foreigners used to live.

Since tobacco was not introduced to the Middle East until relatively late in historical terms--perhaps the late 16th Century--it was never discussed in the Koran, Islam’s holy book, which was written in the 7th Century, or in other religious commentaries that determine whether a substance is haraam , which means forbidden, or makruh , which means disapproved but not forbidden. The Koran does forbid the use of any substance that is not good for one, but that definition is fairly broad.

Green Light

Muslim scholars, unable to agree, decided in the end to leave the issue up to the individual. Many in the Muslim world, where everything from alcohol to nutmeg has been banned at one time or another, took that as a green light to smoke.

Despite the late start for smoking in the Persian Gulf area, Abdullatif Saud Babtain, who imports Phillip Morris cigarettes such as Marlboro and Merit in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, said in an interview that his business now accounts for a significant percentage of the profit made by Phillip Morris International.

“We have a large bachelor population with nothing to do,” said Babtain, referring to the absence of music clubs and dating in Saudi Arabia. “The bachelors tend to smoke.”

Social Courtesy

Because Saudi courtesy requires that virtually every visitor be offered a cup of coffee and a cigarette, he added, people tend to smoke heavily to be polite.

“If I smoked every cigarette I was offered, I’d have to smoke six packs a day,” he said.

One factor that critics of smoking in the Middle East mention is that the government has a monopoly on tobacco sales in many countries, such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Tobacco sales help those governments balance their budgets, and that makes them reluctant to press campaigns against smoking.

In Egypt, for example, the hard-pressed government spends $110 million a year to import tobacco but earns $800 million in cigarette sales. In Jordan, the government earned $150 million in 1986 selling cigarettes.

Smuggled Goods

In Lebanon, taxes on cigarettes are so high that in the 13 years of civil war, smuggling foreign cigarettes into the country has evolved into something of a national industry. The low price of the tax-free cigarettes encourages smoking in Lebanon, where the everyday dangers of life are so great that the risks of smoking pale in comparison.

“Smoking calms me down,” a Beirut resident told an American visitor in May. “Who knows if I’ll be alive tomorrow. So why should I worry about cigarettes?”

Although the Middle East lags behind the Western world in consciousness of the dangers of smoking, efforts are increasing to urge people to cut back.

Saudi Arabia, for example, has banned smoking in government offices, removing ashtrays and posting signs showing skulls emerging from the ends of cigarettes. But many government employees acknowledge that the campaign has simply turned them into clandestine smokers.

Advertising Ban

Most Arab countries have adopted a ban on cigarette advertising, but their efforts are being undone because Radio Monte Carlo, an Arabic-language radio station operated by the French government and arguably the most popular station in the Arab world, still accepts tobacco ads. The tobacco companies are also leading supporters of sporting events in the Arab world.

Jordan has had a strict anti-smoking law on its books since 1977, banning smoking in public gathering places and on buses and in taxis. But the law is almost totally ignored. King Hussein smokes an American brand in public, while Prime Minister Zaid Rifai is known for his torpedo-shaped Havana cigars.

Alia, the Jordanian national airline, is trying to do its part in the anti-smoking effort, however. Ali Ghandour, the airline’s chairman and an adamant nonsmoker, recently banned smoking on the airline’s routes of less than one hour--all two of them.