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Syria's president on Monday issued a decree banning smoking in public places, joining an anti-smoking trend already under way in other Arab countries.
The ban also includes a rare restriction in the Arab world: limiting places where Syrians can indulge in the hubbly bubbly — water pipes known locally as argileh.
President Bashar Assad's decree, which will go into effect in six months, bans smoking in restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theaters, schools, official functions and on public transport. Offenders will be fined 2,000 Syrian pounds — about $45.
Syria had taken steps before to try to restrict smoking, including a 1996 decree issued by Assad's late father, Hafez, that banned smoking in government institutions, hospitals and at the airport.
But the ban was often flouted and not strictly enforced. The younger Assad recently issued a law that banned the sale of tobacco to those under the age of 18.
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President Bashar al-Assad issued on Sunday the 2009 legislative decree No 62 for preventing smoking and selling and providing tobacco products at certain public utilities mentioned in the decree (schools, universities, hospitals, buses, centers…etc).
The decree prevents smoking during meetings, conferences, lectures, training activities and official symposiums.
Syria's president has issued a decree banning smoking inside cafes, restaurants and other public spaces.
The decree also outlaws smoking in educational institutions, health centres, sports halls, cinemas and theatres and on public transport.
Workers must not smoke during meetings and businesses need to provide well-ventilated areas for smokers.
The restrictions include the nargile, or hubble-bubble pipe, which is a favourite among locals and tourists.
The decree, signed by President Bashar al-Assad, a qualified medical doctor, imposes a fine of 2,000 Syrian pounds ($46) on those who break the ban.
The decree, signed by President Bashar al-Assad, sets a fine of 2,000 ($46) Syrian pounds on anyone flouting the ban in cafes, pubs and restaurants, the SANA agency said.
The ban extends to schools and public transport, and covers the nargile
To deal with the family's deteriorating financial situation, Amer started working in the production of charcoal from the oak trees of the nearby Al-Shoaira forest.
The charcoal fetches a good price because of demand for it to use in nargiles, the hubble-bubble tobacco pipes popular in cafes across the country, but the uncontrolled harvesting of wood is endangering the country's forests.
It is thought that hundreds of Syrians work in the production of charcoal today, especially in the heavily wooded northern coastal areas of Tartous and Latakia.
The numbers have increased because of the recent rise in unemployment and inflation, observers say. Some people with other jobs produce charcoal in their spare time to raise cash because their salaries are insufficient. . . .
Dr. Mahmoud Ali, a professor of environmental sciences at Tishreen University in Latakia, said the green cover is decreasing "dangerously" in Syria and the area of forest per inhabitant and relative to the country's total land area is low.
"Producing charcoal could kill the trees or affect the quality of the wood by making them more vulnerable to attacks by pests," Ali said.
The growing deforestation is also leading to climate change and other undesirable effects on the environment, said Dr. Amin Moussa, an agricultural expert also teaching at Tishreen University.
Syrian smokers spend $US600 million, or eight percent of their income, on their habit. They consume the equivalent of 3.6 kg of tobacco per person every year according to a study by the Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies.
According to a Syria News report, the government has been campaigning since 2006 on several fronts to combat smoking, including legislating against tobacco advertising in public places and prohibiting tobacco sales to anyone under 19 years-old. The law is now to be amended to prohibit anyone under 18 years-old from buying cigarettes.
Syria is a signatory of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention for Tobacco Control
In its statistics, the Syrian General Establishment of TobaccoGeneral Establishment of Tobacco pointed out that smokers annually spend about S.P. 26 billion (USD 600 million) which means that each smoker spends 8 percent of his annual income to buy about 3,6 kg of cigarettes.
The statistics stressed that the percentage of smokers raise to 15 %, where the informal studies indicated that the real percentage is more than 20 %.
The study, made by the Syrian Center for Smoking Researches, showed that the rate of smokers among men reaches 60 percent and 23 percent for women.
Due to the danger of smoking on the smoker himself and his society, the Syrian government exerted all efforts to combat smoking through issuing a number of decrees to prevent tobacco propaganda like the Decree No.13 for the year 1996 and the legislative Decree No. 59 for the year 2004 which allowed Syria to join the Framework Agreement on Tobacco Control
Smokers in Syria burn up about 600 million dollars on tobacco and cigarettes each year, despite a ban on advertising and smoking in public, according to statistics published on Monday.
"Smokers annually spend about 26 billion Syrian pounds (600 million dollars)," the state news agency SANA said, quoting a report by an official Syrian tobacco institution.
"Each smoker spends about eight percent of his income to buy 3.6 kilogrammes (about eight pounds) of tobacco," it said.
The number of smokers in the Middle Eastern country has gone up by 15 percent
The Syrian government plans to ban smokers from lighting up in enclosed public places in a bid to curb rising numbers of tobacco-related deaths, the health ministry announced last month.
The ban, to be imposed in all shops, offices, bars, restaurants and bus stations, will affect the roughly five million Syrians – a massive 20 per cent of the entire population – who smoke at least once a day, according to surveys by the Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies.
Smokers caught breaking the rules will face steep fines and the possibility of a jail sentence, said Bassam Abu al-Thahab, director of the health ministry’s department for combating smoking.
The draft law, which follows a July 2008 prohibition on smoking in government buildings, will include cigars, pipes and even the traditional water pipe or nargile – a major attraction in many Damascus bars and restaurants.
Once the supporting legislation is passed, health ministry officials plan to gradually bring in the ban over the period until 2013.
The Syrian government announced on Tuesday that it will adopt an anti-smoking law 'to protect people from the negative consequences of smoking on health, economy and environment'.
The law prevents smoking in public places and prohibits advertising of all tobacco products, reported the Syrian official news agency SANA.
Recently, his breathing became so laboured he responded to a get-help ad in the newspaper.
He called the Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies, an organisation dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers of smoking. . . .
Founded in 2002, the clinic consists of three rooms jammed with medical equipment. Patients smoke water pipes while doctors monitor their vital signs.
It is here Mr Yareen receives counselling for his addiction. But this personal battle is part of a much greater war to end Syria's love affair with smoking. And the world has noticed. Through research, health campaigns and collaborations with hospitals in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the United States, the centre has been recognised with the Hamdan Award for best medical institute in the Arab world.
From this small office, researchers have worked with the American University in Beirut to study the harmful effects of water pipe smoking; Jordan University to investigate smoking among youth; John Hopkins University in the United States to research Arab children's exposure to second-hand smoke; and the University of Newcastle in the United Kingdom to study the determinants of women's health in poor cities in Syria.
The centre is supported by a five-year grant from the US National Institutes of Health.
Abdulla bin Souqat, the director of the Hamdan Awards, said the Syrian Centre is a rallying force that works to dispel strong misconceptions associated with smoking.
Syrians are among the world’s heaviest smokers. Around 60 percent of men and a quarter of women smoke, averaging 21 cigarettes per day. That, according to a recent estimate, means Syrians collectively puff away on some 75 million cigarettes every day. And the number of smokers is on the rise. All of which makes tobacco big business in Syria.
Controlled via a tight government monopoly, the sale of tobacco has yielded the treasury a rich and growing source of revenue in recent years. . . .
Syria’s heavy smoking habit has ensured the GOT is one of the country’s few profitable state-run industries. So successful has the organisation been in recent years, the government recently took the extraordinary step of singling out its workforce for a special pay rise. The depth of the market is also attracting growing numbers of the world’s largest tobacco firms into the sector, with the GOT recently cementing a working partnership with British American Tobacco (BAT), the world’s second largest cigarette manufacturer, to produce internationally branded cigarettes locally.
The deal struck two months ago will see the GOT manufacture the Lucky Strike cigarette brand under licence. . . .
Syria’s growing role as a tobacco manufacturer is being driven by basic demand and supply fundamentals – the country has one of the world’s highest smoking rates and has long produced high-quality tobacco. A 2006 report by the Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies, the most comprehensive survey of tobacco use ever carried out in Syria, revealed 56.9 percent of men and 12.8 percent of women smoke cigarettes.
Authorities have increased the number of outposts to one every 400 yards in some zones along the 354-mile border, a Syrian officer said Saturday, stating each outpost was staffed with a half-dozen soldiers.
"There is no infiltration (into Iraq) here," the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity with Syrian military regulations. However, several Iraqis have been caught smuggling ammunition and tobacco into Syria, he said.
Gunmen fired on a Lebanese army post near the border with Syria, the first such incident since troops deployed last month to control the frontier, the official National News Agency reported on Friday.
It said the shooting took place overnight in the Wadi Khaled area . . .
The Lebanese army has beefed up its presence on the Syrian border to prevent arms from reaching Hizbollah as demanded by a U.N. Security Council resolution . . . Smugglers use the Wadi Khaled area to transport items such as cement, diesel and tobacco across the border.