Group launches anti-shisha campaign

A group of Saudi women volunteers this week launched a Facebook campaign called “Live without Shisha.” The campaign aims to fight the phenomena of young shisha smokers in Saudi Arabia. This campaign came after the Ministry of interior banned restaurants and coffee shops from serving shisha in Jeddah last month.
Live without Shisha’s intentions is to reach the younger generation aging from 15 to 25 and to spread awareness about the harm caused by smoking shisha. Even though the Facebook group is not active yet, people are already talking about it.
The campaign was a join forces between Ali Al-Marrani and Saudi physiologist Dr. Maha Hariri.
“Shisha is way worse than smoking, it can bring to it’s smoke over 400 different diseases,” said Hariri. “I wanted to launch this campaign to answer back to those who were against the Ministry of interior’s decision to ban shisha and the restaurant owners who said their business is going to lose,” she said.
Hariri said restaurants and a coffee shop basing their income on shisha sales is a failed business from the start.
“I don’t support those kinds of restaurants and cafes who are supporting shisha and accepting to make profit from it,” she said. “It’s like they don’t care about the health of the young ones they only care about the profit and success of their business.”
The society accepted shisha with time and it became a normal thing for someone to smoke it inside and outside the house, according to Hariri.
“I would partly blame the society for this phenomena, they made us think that smoking shisha is for grown ups,” she said. “Many teenagers do it because they think it’s acting like a grown up and that their parents do it in front of them so it’s normal and harmless,” she added.
Now that no one can smoke in closed areas, smokers can only smoke shisha in open areas in Jeddah. “I hope the next step is to ban smoking shisha once and for all and I hope people would accept this and quit smoking it and save their own lives,” said Hariri. “Cigarette packs has warning stickers on them but shisha doesn’t and those who are serving it at the cafes and not informing people about its harm.”
The volunteers chose to start the campaign on social media for it is the fastest way to reach the public.
“The part of the society who we want to reach are the teenagers, and the easiest way to reach them is through Facebook and twitter,” said Hariri.