'My cigarette is more important'
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ByAshrafMaghribi
Okaznewspaper

It was Thursday night at one of the upscale restaurants of Jeddah. Heidi, 7, had come with her parents to the 5-star restaurant to celebrate her success in the final exams. The girl suffers from chronic asthma and has been using allergy sprays for years. In one of the corners of the famous restaurant the happy family sat and celebrated.

At a neighboring table sat another family. The father was smoking a cigarette and puffing out its poisonous smoke everywhere, with complete disregard for those around him.
Heidi began to suffer from an asthma attack. She started coughing continuously and had trouble breathing. Her mother frantically began looking for the spray to ease her daughter’s breathing difficulty only to discover that due to her haste and happiness over her daughter’s success, she had not brought the spray. Heidi’s father marched towards the smoker and politely requested him to extinguish his cigarette, but the man replied, “I’m sitting at my table and what I do is none of your business!”

Heidi’s condition deteriorated and her family rushed her to the nearest hospital where she was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) after heart and lung resuscitation.
At that posh restaurant, a plate with Heidi’s favorite food lies untouched on the table and next to it a small sign that is barely visible to the naked eye says “No Smoking”.
The aim of this article is not to highlight the complications due to the adverse effects of smoking, which are known to all, and not on the poisons we inhale daily, whether we like it or not. How I wish we followed our teacher and Prophet (peace be upon him) when he said, “We should not harm others nor should we be harmed.”
(Quoted by Ibn Majah).
I ask: How many patients should suffer or die before the decision to ban smoking in restaurants and public places is implemented, along with stiff penalties and heavy fines for whoever violates these rights?

Smoking is a matter of choice, but breathing is not. Your freedom of choice stops where your cigarette’s smoke reaches the air others are breathing!

What I narrated is a true incident and I am almost sure it is repeated every other day.