Smoking is very dangerous and all governments are doing their best to ban this habit in public areas, even in bars. An active smoker is someone who smokes, while a passive smoker inhales the smoke from active smokers' cigarettes. Even passive smokers can develop heart disease and cancer. Asign of underdevelopment People who smoke in an office may be responsible for the ill health of their non-smoking colleagues. There are no laws in Egypt forbidding smoking in public places and offices. In Egyptian schools, boys start smoking at an early age. Young teenagers can often be seen smoking in the street. They consider smoking to be mature, tough and a sign of social prestige. Education programmes and the mass media should advertise the fact that smoking is a sign of underdevelopment rather of social success. Another dangerous king of smoking is very popular in Egypt: shisha. Everywhere you go you'll find cafés where young men and women too smoke shisha. Cigarette smokers pretend that they've stopped smoking by smoking 'nondangerous' shisha instead. They're gravely mistaken. Smoking one shisha is the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes. Some young men pretend that smoking shisha with fruit flavours isn't dangerous, claiming that the tobacco is 'lighter'. Again, they're gravely mistaken. The dangers of nicotine Tobacco contains nicotine, which is directly absorbed by all the mucosa of the organism: from the lips, the mouth, the pharynx, the larynx and finally the trachea and bronchi. When a smoker says that he does not inhale, perhaps he doesn't realise that the nicotine in the tobacco is absorbed by all the mucosa of the human organism. Such nicotine enters the blood and damages the walls of the arteries, starting the process of atherosclerosis. Platelets pass below the lining layer of the arteries through the nicotine-induced injury. Their pseudopodia trap white blood corpuscles that have engulfed fat circulating in the blood. Heart attack candidates Over time, the fat below the lining layer of the arteries becomes calcified. As the artery becomes hard, its lumen becomes narrower, slowing the flow of blood through the artery. A hardened wall lining in addition to the slow flow precipitates clot formation in the blood and total obstruction of the artery. If this happens in the coronary arteries of the heart, a heart attack occurs. The patient will then feel the chest pain of angina pectoris and myocardial infarction. If the same process happens in the arteries of the brain, a stroke occurs; if it takes place in the peripheral arteries of the limbs, ischaemia and gangrene of the limbs occur. Diabetes mellitus, hypertension and high levels of lipids in the blood are additional factors that accelerate development of the process of atherosclerosis described above. Parents' example Egypt needs a strict law that forbids smoking in public areas and in all official places. The mass media should warn the public against smoking shisha. In recent years, tuberculosis has reappeared here, because of all the shisha smoking. The Egyptian health authorities now insist that waiters in cafés provide their customers with disposable mouthpieces for shisha and this has gone a long way to dealing with the problem. Nevertheless, these same waiters are very vulnerable to the effects of both active and passive smoking. There are no laws to protect them from the smoke from shisha in the cafés where they work. Not uncommonly, such waiters contract lung cancer or severe coronary artery disease. In conclusion, one may say that the family should play the prime role in combatting smoking in the younger generation, while the municipal police in each governorate should do more to limit shisha smoking to certain specified areas. E-mail: nasssr@link.net
