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• HELLYER: Must our tobacco farming heritage go up in smoke?  

The Ministerial Legislative Committee, whose task it is to review all new draft federal laws, recently approved the draft anti-smoking law - including a ban on smoking in public places, tightening up on tobacco imports, and forbiding the establishment of factories for tobacco products.

I have no disagreement with any of the above, even though I am, foolishly, still a smoker. . . .

To what extent, I wonder, have the draughtsmen of the law taken into account the fact that in November next year, Abu Dhabi will stage its own Formula One Grand Prix for the first time? Are the teams sponsored by tobacco companies to be told that they cannot participate? I doubt it. . . .

it is of relevance to the national heritage - and that is the proposal that the cultivation of tobacco in the UAE should be forbidden.

Most UAE residents, whether citizens or expatriates, including, perhaps, most or all of our legal draughtsmen, are probably unaware that there is a small-scale tobacco growing industry in the Emirates. You have to look hard to find it, but on small fields tucked away in the mountains, tobacco has been grown as a cash crop, probably for centuries, perhaps originally introduced from the Americas by the Portuguese. . . .

The latest Statistical Yearbook of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, suggests that the UAE's annual production of tobacco is 1,000 ton . . .

Is the traditional cultivation of tobacco here to be declared illegal simply because it hasn't really been taken into account? When the draft law was discussed by the Federal National Council, did FNC members from tobacco-growing Emirates simply fail to consider the interests of the small-scale farmers whom they are supposed to represent?

I am perfectly happy for the new law to ban commercial-scale tobacco cultivation - that is an industry the UAE doesn't need, and has never had. It would be a pity, though to consign this tiny part of the UAE's heritage to history in the pursuit of an anti-smoking agenda without evaluating the possible impact of a ban on the viability of traditional agricultural practices that are already difficult to sustain.

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