The Health Ministry has plans to ban hookah use in traditional restaurants and rest houses along roads across the country, said deputy minister Ali Akbar Sayyari. “Tobacco consumption is a leading cause of various types of cancer in Iran, and reducing its consumption needs promoting a culture of abstinence,” he said, ISNA reported. Previously the ministry had banned hookahs in open-air gardens in cooperation with the judiciary and municipalities. Sayyari said Iranians spend around 100,000 billion rials ($3 billion) on tobacco products every year.
