ABSTRACT
Drawing on archival and field research conducted in America and in Saudi Arabia from 2013 to 2016, this chapter focuses on the failure of the Saudi state and religious elites to deter the concerted campaign by multinational tobacco companies to make Saudis smokers. It argues that the rise of the new class of Saudi smokers reflects the nexus of several social factors: an oil-driven consumer spending boom in the 1970s, a series of mass marketing campaigns that linked smoking to American freedom and modernity and Islam. These campaigns built on the tobacco industry's record of conducting detailed exhaustive surveys of smokers, overcoming social or religious impediments to smoking, and opening profitable new markets. In particular, Saudi Arabia smokers preferred American brands, which they saw as symbols of both Western modernity and openness to the world beyond the Kingdom. Indeed, anyone who smoked was implicitly challenging the authority of religious beliefs.
