Government pushes to regulate Shisha smoking in cafés

CAIRO –14 March 2018: In Egypt, it becomes harder to find a place to go if you don’t smoke, and nearly impossible to walk through a café without walking through a fruit-scented smoke cloud.

The Alexandria-based Center for Environmental Affairs will submit a request to the ministries of health and environment to regulate indoor shisha (hookah) in public cafés.

Mohamed Saloma, head of the center, said that the new regulation will expectedly come into effect within 60 days, adding that the center will brief the cafés department of Alexandria’s Chamber of Commerce with the details of the new regulation and its contents.

Saloma added that the new regulations stipulate that an enclosed area of a 100 square meters only will be allotted to smokers, and the whole remaining area should consequently be smoke free, while a physical barrier should be built between the two areas.

This came during a meeting organized by the café owners department with representatives of the Ministry of Environment in the governorate.

According to a recent study conducted on shisha smokers, 81 percent were found to be spending 10 percent of their income on daily shisha consumption.

In December, Parliament considered enforcing a new law that put stricter control on smoking shisha in public cafés and restaurants. According to the new proposal, café and restaurant owners should get a license to offer shisha, as per specifications put forward by the Ministry of Environment.