PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Mohammed Jawad AU - Lama El Kadi AU - Sanaa Mugharbil AU - Rima Nakkash TI - Waterpipe tobacco smoking legislation and policy enactment: a global analysis AID - 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-051911 DP - 2015 Mar 01 TA - Tobacco Control PG - i60--i65 VI - 24 IP - Suppl 1 4099 - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/24/Suppl_1/i60.short 4100 - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/24/Suppl_1/i60.full SO - Tob Control2015 Mar 01; 24 AB - Objective (1) To review how current global tobacco control policies address regulation of waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS). (2) To identify features associated with enactment and enforcement of WTS legislation. Data Sources (1) Legislations compiled by Tobacco Control Laws (www.tobaccocontrollaws.org). (2) Weekly news articles by ‘Google Alerts’ (www.google.com/alerts) from July 2013 to August 2014. Study Selection (1) Countries containing legislative reviews, written by legal experts, were included. Countries prohibiting tobacco sales were excluded. (2) News articles discussing aspects of the WHO FCTC were included. News articles related to electronic-waterpipe, crime, smuggling, opinion pieces or brief mentions of WTS were excluded. Data Abstraction (1) Two reviewers independently abstracted the definition of “tobacco product” and/or “smoking”. Four tobacco control domains (smokefree law, misleading descriptors, health warning labels and advertising/promotion/sponsorship) were assigned one of four categories based on the degree to which WTS had specific legislation. (2) Two investigators independently assigned at least one theme and associated subtheme to each news article. Data Synthesis (1) Reviewed legislations of 62 countries showed that most do not address WTS regulation but instead rely on generic tobacco/smoking definitions to cover all tobacco products. Where WTS was specifically addressed, no additional legislative guidance accounted for the unique way it is smoked, except for in one country specifying health warnings on waterpipe apparatuses (2) News articles mainly reported on noncompliance with public smoking bans, especially in India, Pakistan and the UK. Conclusions A regulatory framework evaluated for effectiveness and tailored for the specificities of WTS needs to be developed.