Smoking is a very bad and harmful habit both physically and economically. This writer is not in a position to advise readers as I am like a carpenter whose doors are off of their hinges. In other words, I need to stop smoking before I can advise others.

But despite all this, we can talk about what Dr. Hussein Ghannam, Deputy Director General of Health Affairs, said about the penalties that will soon be imposed against employees who smoke in government offices and institutions. According to Dr. Ghannam, the penalties will begin with a deduction of 15 days’ or 50 percent of the offender’s monthly salary.

This is a patent injustice especially if compared to some of the other rules and regulations regarding employees’ accountability in both public and private institutions. For example, in the case of an employee who destroys or damages something in his care, even if the value is SR1 million, the regulations do not permit deduction of more than 10 percent of his salary to compensate for the loss. Similarly, if an employee abstains from work without justification, only the salary for the number of days he was absent is deducted.

However, lighting one cigarette means the employee loses half a month’s salary. I agree with Dr. Ghannam when he says stern measures ought to be taken but for the Ministry of Health to say this is incomprehensible and unjustified because the ministry, which supervises clinics that help smokers kick the habit, should know better than anyone that smoking is an addiction and it takes the body nine months to completely rid itself of nicotine. Someone trying to quit smoking may easily relapse not because he necessarily wants to but because he is addicted to nicotine and his body craves it.

Therefore, I support the reasonable and just laws that are implemented everywhere — that is, a fine of SR100 that increases with the number of violations. Any employee who wants to smoke should do so during his break and outside where he won’t be an annoyance to others. In this way, we will be helping the smoker to decrease the amount of cigarettes he smokes until he is finally able to kick the habit. What is most important is to protect employees who are not smokers. But to enact laws like this comes under decisions that remain on paper and cannot be implemented because it is illogical and unjust to deduct half of an employee’s salary for smoking a cigarette while the employee who destroys something worth millions, gets away with a 10 percent deduction of his salary.