And now smokers are telling fibs – whatever next

At least some medical doctors in the UAE are skeptical about the results of a survey that apparently showed tobacco smoking was ‘falling out of favor’. They believe that some respondents lied to those conducting the survey.

A story by Anam Rizvi and Jennifer Bell in The National Newspaper did not mention who carried out the survey and gave few details of the results, but it said that 76 percent of respondents had said they did not smoke cigarettes or shisha.

And of those who did admit to smoking, few admitted to smoking every day: 16 percent in the case of cigarette smokers and only three percent in the case of shisha smokers.

It is possibly little wonder then that doctors find the survey results hard to swallow – and it’s possibly even less surprising that, given the stigma attached to smoking, smokers resorted to the odd fib.

“People may deny smoking in a general survey but they don’t lie in front of a doctor,” Dr. Sajeev Nair, a specialist pulmonologist, was quoted as saying.

“Smoking is very prevalent in the UAE. My colleagues and I often discuss whether more people are smoking nowadays compared to earlier, and we think that it is increasing slowly among the younger people.”

Nair estimated that between 70 and 75 percent of his patients were smokers.