CAIRO - 6 July 2021: Smoking scenes in Egyptian drama dropped from 13 percent in Ramadan 2017 to 3.9 percent in 2021, in addition to a rising tendency to depict the dangers of smoking and support addiction treatment, according the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s Fund for Drug Control and Treatment of Addiction.
The Fund’s recent analysis of Egyptian drama’s portrayal of smoking and drug abuse further revealed that scenes depicting drugs and alcohol consumption dropped from 4 percent in 2017 Ramadan drama to 1.3 percent in the most recent season.
Commending these positive trends, Minister of Social Solidarity Niveen Al-Qabbaj underlined that the Ministry is convinced of the ability of the media and drama to shape the thoughts and sentiments of children and youth, and to indirectly amend and guide the behavior, especially with regards to addiction and drugs abuse.
She pointed out that 72 percent of Egyptian youth get their information about these issues from the media.
Among the report’s negative remarks on the dramatic approach for the year 2021 was that women accounted for 15 percent of smokers in drama series, while the actual ratio is only 5.1 percent compared to men. Moreover, several series tended to indirectly promote for modern smoking trends such as the electronic cigarette and the vape.
That said, many positive trends have also been noted, including the lack of any scenes depicting children smoking or consuming drugs, and a rise in the number of series that were completely free of any smoking or drug abuse scenes.
Al-Qabbaj further honored some of the series contributing to spreading awareness about drugs, as well as the Egyptian Media Group for its efforts to support the Fund.
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