Kicking The Cigarette Butt

The Dubai municipality has formed a team to oversee the phase-in of new smoking restrictions after May 31, XPRESS has learnt.

After several years of false starts, the restrictions will be implemented in coming months following the crafting of regulations by the six-member team.

There will not be a ban. These will be restrictions. When we say 'ban' people get angry with us. Zuhoor Al Sabbagh

According to team member Zuhoor Al Sabbagh, Head of Clinic and Community Health Section for the municipality, the group is viewing the new rules as a means of improving public health, not as a way of clamping down on personal freedoms.

“There will not be a ban,” Al Sabbagh told XPRESS in an interview. “These will be restrictions. When we say ‘ban’ people get angry with us.”

The new team will be led by Salim Mohammad Mesmar, Director of Public Health at the municipality.

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Health Minister Humaid Mohammad Obaid Al Qutami will be in Dubai today to mark World No Tobacco Day.

The minister is on hand at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel to observe winning designs for a series of posters and letters that were submitted as part of a nationwide poster competition, that is encouraging a 100 per cent smoke-free environment.

The competition was sponsored by medical firm Pfizer which is launching a new no-smoking drug, Champix, in September. The UAE will be the first to introduce the drug.

The decision by the municipality to prohibit smoking in public areas meets a call by the Dubai Strategic Plan 2007-2015 to prioritise public health protection.

Fines will be imposed against those who choose t o flout the law but the fine schedule has yet to be announced as have other provisions of the new restrictions. Al Sabbagh said that the no-smoking team is working on a detailed plan for the 30 malls in Dubai to spell out in fine print the specifics of the new regulations.

“A memorandum of understanding is to be signed by a group of mall directors,” she said. “September 15 will be the starting day for the shopping malls.”

She declined to elaborate on other details in the memo which is likely to be signed today.

The team, meanwhile, is looking to expand its membership as it looks to future work, she said.

“There are a lot of people coming forward asking us to volunteer,” Al Sabbagh said.

Why is smoking addictive?

According to the American Cancer Society, “When smoke is inhaled, nicotine is carried deep into the lungs, where it is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and carried throughout the body.

"Nicotine affects many parts of the body, including your heart and blood vessels, your hormonal system, your metabolism and your brain.”

The society reports that, “Nicotine produces pleasant feelings that make the smoker want to smoke more. It also acts as a kind of depressant by interfering with the flow of information between nerve cells.

"As the nervous system adapts to nicotine, smokers tend to increase the number of cigarettes they smoke, and therefore the amount of nicotine in their blood. After a while, the smoker develops a tolerance to the drug, which leads to an increase in smoking over time.

"Over time, the smoker reaches a certain nicotine level and then smokes to maintain this level of nicotine. In fact, nicotine, when inhaled in cigarette smoke, reaches the brain faster than drugs that enter the body intravenously.”

When Smokers Quit – What Are The Benefits Over Time?

• Twenty minutes after quitting:
  Your heart rate and blood pressure drop.
• Twelve hours after quitting: The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
• Two weeks to 3 months after quitting: Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.

Notable names in nicotine

• Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492 and soon returned to Spain with his armada of Spanish galleons loaded to the gunnels with the strange new plant called tobacco. Source: www.tobacco-facts.info
• Jean Nicot is the man for whom nicotine – the active drug ingredient in tobacco that smokers are addicted to – is named. In 1560 he introduced tobacco as snuff to French aristocracy as a cure-all for severe headaches. The tobacco plant’s name nicotinia and the active drug it contains nicotia! na is named after him.
• Sir Walter Raleigh is generally regarded as the man who introduced tobacco to England and spawned an instant craze for the new substance. Favoured under Queen Elizabeth I, he soon drew the ire of King James I and was beheaded in 1618. Shortly before his demise he was quoted to have said: “This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases.”

Recent studies conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) have shown that smoking rates have risen to an alarming level in the UAE. The study reveals 24.3 per cent of males between the ages of 13-15 are currently smoking tobacco products while as many as 42 per cent of 17-year-old males have developed smoking habits. Of the total male adult population in the country, 20 per cent are smokers. Adult female smokers constitute 2.9 per cent.

In numbers

• 15 billion is the estimated number of cigarettes
  sold worldwide every day or about 10 million
  every minute
• 1:3 the ratio of males who smoke around the world
• 20 per cent of teens smoke worldwide
• 100,000 teens start smoking every day somewhere around the planet
• 5 minutes of your life is stolen by every cigarette you smoke