Jump to full article: MENAFN.com, 2006-01-22
Author: Justin Martin Jordan Times - 22/01/2006
Intro: I recently had a conversation with a taxicab driver about cigarette smoking. As a curious American surprised by the level of Jordanians' rampant and seemingly unbridled use of cigarettes, I asked my driver why he chose to smoke, as we raced down Zahran Street in thin mid-morning traffic.
The cabbie explained that, due mostly to monotony and boredom, he smokes between two and three packs of cigarettes six days a week, every day he drives his cab. . . .
In a country like Jordan, where GDP per capita income is a struggling JD3,200, cigarette smoking can be a major drain on Jordanians' discretionary income. With more than 10 per cent of Jordanians living below the World Bank's definition of abject poverty, the Kingdom cannot afford to allow smoking levels to increase or to even continue at the same rates.
Measures have been taken in the past to curtail tobacco use in Jordan, albeit futilely. In the late 1970s, Jordan became the first country in the Middle East to ban smoking in public places . . .
Jordan's Department of Statistics reported within the last five years that Jordanians spend about JD250 million (approximately $350 million) on tobacco products every year, a sum representing two per cent of Jordan's gross national product in 2004. This bears repeating: one of every 50 dinars generated by the Jordanian economy is spent on tobacco.
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