The UAE is showing growing impatience with smoking and smokers, especially after the latest findings from national and international research that underscores the horror stories about the detrimental effects on health of tobacco. In this country, three out of 10 people smoke, while up to 65 per cent of Dubai’s population are classified as passive smokers, and as many as 14 per cent of those aged between 13 and 16 are already tobacco addicts.

Internationally, evidence abounds of tobacco killing up to 50 per cent of its regular users, and by 2030, it will be the single biggest cause of death worldwide, killing some 10 million people per year. Traditionally, the UAE has addressed concerns about smoking through drafting new laws seeking to curb the habit, or by launching public awareness campaigns about the health hazards.

But this year, the UAE observed the May 31 international “No to Smoking Day” by pointing a Government finger at what is widely believed to be the biggest recruiter for the smoking epidemic: the television, movie, and advertising industries.

It is reported that the Ministry of Health is to lobby the GCC film industry to stop glamorising tobacco by showing actors smoking on screen. But given the global nature these days of the media business, is it possible for individual nations – or regional groups like the GCC – to act alone in addressing such concerns?

Clearly, the role of the visual media in promoting tobacco usage is a global concern. And in many parts of the world, the television, movie, and advertising industries have been frequent targets of public criticism for promoting smoking as a socially-acceptable habit. The main charge against the media is that smokers are presented as heroic figures and role models to be imitated. Audiences, especially the younger ones, seem highly susceptible to such portrayals.

According to an international medical publication, smokers are typically portrayed in television drama and movies as successful, influential and attractive, particularly to the opposite sex. Rarely is smoking portrayed in a negative manner or associated with detrimental consequences. The American Lung Association estimates that 92 per cent of American films rated PG-13 show smoking in a favourable manner. Research by the World Health Organisation showed that between 1988-1997, 85 per cent of Hollywood’s top 25 box office films glorified the use of tobacco, the highest rate in half a century.
 

The pan-Arab and international television programmes and movies accessible to audiences in the UAE more or less reflect the same patterns as far as smoking is concerned. While only two satellite television channels have been identified as carrying cigarette commercials, many publications and advertising billboards continue to promote smoking. The most explicit representations, however, come from foreign and Arab television shows where smoking is often used to confer some social legitimacy on the characters.

In one episode of a popular Egyptian soap opera, the main actor, a tribal chief, makes his most critical decisions only while puffing on a shisha, while in a Syrian television drama, the Turkish Tarboush and smoking pipe are regular props for the chef protagonist.

In an Egyptian movie, a father reprimands his 16-year old son for smoking in secret, but the boy replies by saying he has become an independent adult — the implication being that smoking marks his initiation into manhood. In another Egyptian movie, Mafia, which depicts security police foiling a terrorist plot in Egypt, the hero takes out a cigarette and, by a neat trick, flicks it into the air to land perfectly in his mouth. In a Lebanese TV series, upper class women appear smoking in numerous scenes to symbolise their self-confidence and social status.

The UAE deserves to be lauded for blowing the whistle on the media’s glamorisation of smoking. However, the success of facing a global challenge of this magnitude depends more on the concerted efforts of international organisations than national governments. Although the tobacco industry has taken a hard beating in some North American and European markets in recent years, its seductive appeal to the media, especially to the Hollywood and Bollywood-based movie industries, is likely to remain highly irresistible for years to come.

But for the UAE and other GCC countries, the experience of anti-smoking activism in the United States and other countries may be useful. Groups such as Smoke Free Movies have sought to get the entertainment industry to apply “R” rating schemes on films that include smoking scenes and to run anti-smoking ads before the screening of films with tobacco-related content. These steps, though admittedly small scale, will probably contribute significantly to the long-term battle to prevent young people acquiring the smoking addiction in the first place.

Muhammad Ayish is Dean of the College of Communications at the University of Sharjah