From a Tobacco Perspective, the Middle East is More Similar to Other Markets than Some Might Think

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter  07/26/2013

Reviewing in the  London Review of Books  (June 21, 2012) Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue, Pankaj Mishra wrote that, in 1890, an itinerant Muslim activist, Jamul al-din al-Afghani, was in Iran when its then-ruler, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, granted a tobacco concession to a British busi-nessman, G.F. Talbot, effectively granting him a monopoly on its purchase, sale and export. Mishra goes on to explain how the activist organized opposition to the granting of the concession and that, in the end, the Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi, issued a fatwa "effectively making it un-Islamic to smoke until the monopoly was withdrawn."

I quote this piece because I have, for a long time, wondered whether smoking bans based on Islamic principles could end the practice in certain countries. And here, the inference is that this indeed did happen—apparently the fatwa was "astonishingly successful"—but on a temporary basis: until the monopoly was withdrawn. This is fascinating and raises a number of questions, most of which aren't relevant here.

Of course, what is described above happened a long time ago, but the question of whether Muslims ought to smoke is raised from time to time today. I have certainly seen stories to this effect originating in Indonesia in the recent past, but they seem to have come to nothing. Why is this, I wonder? Is it because—unlike in the case of alcohol—the principles involved are difficult to interpret, or is it because of more practical reasons? What would happen, I wonder, if principle came up against addiction?

Or what would happen if addiction came up against family obligations? It is not uncommon in the West for smokers to be pressured about their habit on the grounds that it harms family members, a stratagem that is, I think, partially success-ful because, while these smokers might not quit, they often take their cigarettes into the garden or out onto the balcony. Attitudes might be somewhat different in the Middle East, however. In a paper published by Oxford University Press earlier this year, researchers in Ireland and Bahrain concluded that, while water-pipe smokers in Bahrain were frequent and heavy users, they might be encouraged to quit their habit given that they were leaned upon by a partnership of health professionals and disapproving family members.

This is not to suggest that tobacco users in the Middle East—be they Muslims or not—are generally more likely to obey smoking edicts than are people from elsewhere. In fact, the opposite is possibly true. When smoking bans are imposed in the West, smokers might moan about them, but compliance
levels are usually very high—far higher than for speed-limit compliance on the roads, I would guess. But it is not uncom-mon to read of tobaccoregulations being ignored in countries of the Middle East. In fact, a story published in the  Arab News on May 21 clearly implied that public-places smoking bans were not being complied with in Saudi Arabia, even in government buildings.

And in March, a story in the  Saudi Gazette  wrote that shops in the city of Mecca were selling tobacco prod-ucts despite a ban by local authorities. In fact, residents reported that more than 80 percent of shops in the city's Al-Otaibiyah neighborhood sold cigarettes.

Compliance seems not to have been good either in Israel, where, since July 2012, smoking has been banned in all gov-ernment buildings. And this is the case even within the health ministry, which was behind the prohibition on smoking. Staff on the Jerusalem Post  apparently walked up and down the internal staircase of the ministry and, while finding no no-smoking signs, they did find 92 cigarette butts and half a dozen cigarette packs with Hebrew lettering.

Geographical confusion

The issues surrounding tobacco consumption are complex, no matter where you are, but they are, perhaps, especially challenging in the Middle East. I can understand, for instance, why multinational tobacco companies might find it conve-nient to lump together into one reporting area regions such as Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. I suspect that if they tried to separate these regions, they would find themselves involved in endless internal arguments about, for instance, whether Egypt, Libya and Djibouti were in the Middle East or Africa, and whether Armenia and Georgia were in the Middle East or Eastern Europe.

As I understand it, of the countries listed above, only Egypt, which is clearly in Africa, is generally considered to be part of the Middle East, though all of the others are thought to have reasonable claims to being in what might be described as the Middle East-plus.

These things occurred to me recently as I tried to work out what was the population of the Middle East. In the end, I came up with two figures: about 389 million for the Middle East and 814 million for the Middle East-plus. That's a huge difference: The first figure represents about 5.5 percent of the world's pop-ulation, and the second figure represents about 11.5 percent.

I was playing about with population figures and those dealing with tobacco production and consumption, and one interesting fact that came out of my admittedly back-of-the-envelope calculations was that cigarette consumption seems fairly "normal" in the Middle East. Cigarette consumption in the Middle East seems to account for about 5.4 percent of the world total, close to its 5.5 percent population level, while consumption in the Middle East-plus, at 9.1 percent, is a little lower than its population (11.5 percent) would suggest.

But given, too, that the Middle East has a high level of non-cigarette consumption, could it be that tobacco use in the region is, in fact, quite high? Perhaps, but one thing that does seem likely is that consumption is rising there. Flicking through the recent financial reports of the multinationals, I was surprised to see how many times the Middle East was cited as having had a positive effect on volume sales.

Cracking down

Certainly, there seems to be some concern among the authori-ties there. A story in the Gulf News in May reported how the six member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were home to about 4 million smokers, a number that was increasing by 150,000 a year. Smokers within the GCC, which comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, consume about 50 billion cigarettes annually.

And, according to Arabi Atta Allah and Majdi Ashoor, who were described as experts with the Qatar Supreme Health Council, one unnamed study had it that up to 50 percent of GCC students between the ages of 14 and 18 smoked regularly. "In the Arab world, the number of smokers has been steadily increasing, reaching 70 percent among males and 25 percent among females," the two experts were quoted
as saying.

Could these percentages be true? I somehow doubt it. The same report said that in Qatar, where the experts gave a lec-ture, 14 percent of the population smoked. In any case, I guess that the interesting thing here is that the worry, as elsewhere, seems to be about the costs involved. The GCC states were said to spend about $800 million annually on tobacco products  and $500 million on medical interventions made necessary  by smoking.

The reaction to this state of affairs has been for the GCC countries to raise taxes, push anti-smoking campaigns, impose bans and restrictions on public smoking, and, recently, to require all cigarette packs imported into the region to come with one of three graphic health warnings. As elsewhere, such initiatives can cause problems for the tobacco industry, but they are similar to those encountered elsewhere and therefore familiar.

This is not to underestimate the situation in the Middle East. In the UAE's third-largest city, Sharjah, all grocery stores in residential areas and near schools were banned from selling cigarettes beginning April 2. The ban was just the latest in a series of anti-tobacco measures aimed at tackling smoking in the UAE. A federal law on tobacco control was introduced in early 2009 and partly phased-in during 2011. It bans the sale of tobacco products to people under the age of 18; smoking in cars in the presence of children under 12; smoking in houses of worship, educational institutes and health or sports facilities; and selling sweets resembling tobacco products. Other regula-tions have banned smoking in shopping centers and shisha cafés near residential areas. And, there have been calls to ban smoking on residential balconies, largely for fear that carelessly discarded cigarette butts could cause fires.

The illicit trade in tobacco products is a major problem in some countries of the Middle East, and stories about the seizure of niswar tobacco from an unlicensed factory in Abu Dhabi and cigarettes in Jordan were just two recent examples of the European disease.

If the disease is the same, the chances are that the cause is the same. The GCC, which agreed in 1995 to increase cigarette taxes by 100 percent over five years, is again considering raising taxes by 100 percent. And, if the disease is the same, it is likely that the outcomes will be about the same as those suffered in the West. A white paper published as the latest tax increase was being considered suggested that it would increase illicit trade, while not significantly affecting consumption.

I started this piece by speculating about the dangers of smoking being declared un-Islamic in some countries, but, in fact, the tobacco challenges thrown up in the Middle East seem to be much the same as they are elsewhere: underage smoking, taxes, illicit trade, graphic  warnings, public-places  smoking bans and accidental fires. Enditem