The World Health Organization is drawing criticism for telling Syrians struggling to survive a bloody, years-long civil war that they should try to stop smoking.
“Notwithstanding the current crisis in the country, Ms. Elizabeth Hoff, WHO Representative to Syria, has stressed the urgency for controlling tobacco and shisha consumption among the population – especially among youths, women and teenage school children,” the WHO said in a statement June 1.
Shisha is a tobacco-based mix that is smoked in a hookah, something Syrians have been doing for hundreds of years.
While the civil war has killed thousands and turned thousands more into refugees, the WHO said tobacco consumption is something that “endangers the health and future life of smokers and people around them.”
“Many youths, women and school-age children in Syria have taken to shisha smoking believing that it is fashionable and less harmful than cigarettes,” Hoff said. “The truth is that shisha smoking is 20 times more dangerous than cigarette smoking, and shisha users are at risk for some of the same diseases as cigarette smokers such as oral cancer, lung and stomach cancer, cancer of the throat and impaired reproductive capacities.”
Even as Bashar Assad continues to barrel-bomb his own people, the WHO urged Syria’s government to implement a plan to “reduce attractiveness and glamour” of tobacco products that kill “almost 6 million people annually.”
Deputy Minister Dr. Ahmad Khlefawy stressed that “the current crisis,” presumably the civil war, “cannot be an excuse for Syrians to endanger their lives.”
The Sun newspaper reported Wednesday that many critics in the United Kingdom were outraged that the WHO would waste its time warning people in Syria not to smoke.
“Syrians are fleeing for their lives yet these appalling unelected puritans think now is the time to tell them not smoke,” said Simon Clark, who leads a smokers’ group.
“You really have to seriously question WHO’s policy agenda and sanity.” added Drew Johnson of the Taxpayers’ Protection Alliance.
