The tradition of smoking water pipe or hookah existed in the Middle East for centuries; however it turned to become a dramatically popular tendency in the United States and other countries during the last couple of years. The water pipes gained an enormous popularity among the youth. Yet, health activists state the hookah pipes become so popular due to several myths about the safety and reduced health risks of those devises as compared to other tobacco products.
Therefore, we decided to find out everything about hookah in order to confirm or dethrone the myths related to smoking hookah. Upon the arrival to the Smoke & Grill Lounge, we understood that despite rather difficult economic times, the lounge has been packed with people, with the majority of them being young adults, all dragging on their pipes and delivering a lot of nice smelling smoke. “It feels great, and helps get a relaxation after a hard-working day with my friends, while chatting and joking,” confessed Chris Morrison, an inveterate hookah lover.
The Smoke & Grill Lounge owner Howard Young admitted that his business is facing a terrific boom, thanks the introduction of hookah to the menu. He said the lounge is flooded with people almost every day, and they prefer hookah with tea, instead of beer or sodas. He added that hookah changed lifestyle of many people, after its first appearance just several years ago.
Smoking this Arabic water pipe is rather easy. The flavored tobacco is put at the end of the pipe in a special small tube that is heated by coals. The pipe is connected with a bowl filled with water and a hose. The smoker breathes in through the hose, thus, having a puff of tobacco.
According Howard Young, they have up to 60 flavors of tobacco and try to invent a new one by mixing different flavors each month. Exactly those flavors, which leave a pleasant aftertaste, allured many teenagers to smoking hookah, although the Smoke & Grill Lounge owner stated that teenagers under 18 are not permitted to enter his lounge. The fashionable of smoking hookah keeps growing among teens.
Chris Morrison, a student of the local university admitted that all of his friends smoke hookah. He said that it is not about smoking, it is all about communication, because he has not seen people smoking hookah alone. He named smoking hookah a social habit since it gathers people together, makes them happy and keeps away from unhealthy habits.
Morrison’s friend Richard Sykes said that he used to smoke cigarettes when he was 16 but gave up switching to hookah, which he has been smoking up to four times a week with his friends while chatting, watching baseball or basketball or playing video games.
Sykes named hookah as the “cigarette of the young generation.” He mentioned that his parents and relatives have been smoking for many years and all of them started puffing when they were teenagers since it was fashionable and everybody was smoking. But currently, when cigarettes have lost their popularity because of enormous prices, bans and health concerns, it has been a high time to find something new. Thus, hookah appeared and it becomes more and more popular each day.
The booming popularity of hookah became a major headache for health advocates. Elizabeth Caldwell, director of Nevada Tobacco-Free Kids office said that anti-smoking groups are partly responsible for the growing popularity of hookah among teenagers since they have been doing their best to persuade people and especially minors that cigarettes are hazardous for health, therefore, people simply switched to hookah, thinking that it would be a safer and healthier alternative of smoking. And the latter is absolutely not true.
Indeed, the recently published researches have showed that hookah tobacco contains a lot of the same additives as in regular cigarettes that have been related to health complications and addiction. Prof. Robert Bain of Georgia Institute of Technology’ School of Chemistry said that the studies demonstrated that one session of hookah smoking could be equaled to almost 100 regular cigarettes, because usual cigarette needs an average of 9 puffs to be smoked and one hookah can be smoked for up to an hour with almost 20 puffs. Therefore, it means that hookah is even more dangerous for health than conventional cigarettes.
However, teenagers like Chris Morrison and his friends believe that hookah was not as hazardous as cigarettes, and in addition it leaves a pleasant fruit taste. Meantime, scientists state that fruit flavor is used to mask the hazardous truths of hookah tobacco. Robert Bain says that tobacco used for smoking hookah is just another type of tobacco, regardless of the flavor. It is smoked and that is the major issue.
Although the majority of hookah fans believe that the water contained in the bowl is used to filter the tobacco, making it free of hazardous components, experts stated that is a terrible lie since the water does not clean the smoke that is still going to the lungs.
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Tags: hookah lover, smoke hookah, smoking hookah, smoking water pipe or hookah
July 16th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I think this “study” is a load of crap. What this article fails to announce is the fact that cigarette tobacco is laced with additives such as ammonia and arsenic, and hookah tobacco is not. Most hookah tobaccos are washed, causing for lower amounts of nicotine to pass to the smoker. Also, hookah tobacco does not rely on the burning of paper to facilitate smoke transfer. Most hookah tobaccos are a combination of dry cured tobacco (un treated with chemicals), molasses or honey or agave nectar or corn syrup and/or vegetable glycerin, and natural and artificial flavoring (all of which are food safe products).
Also, hookah smokers don’t actually burn any tobacco when they smoke the hookah. The coals are used to heat up the ceramic head that holds the shisha, and the flavorings are vaporized.
So, yes, while the volume of smoke produced over a 45 minute hookah smoking session is much greater than that of a single cigarette, most of that is food safe vapor.
Most of the studies done on hookah smoke have been done by anti-smoking proponents who are uneducated about the product they are trying to demonize.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Completely agree with you Josh, Smoking from a Hookah is more of a social gathering if anything. You hardly see one person smoking from one hookah alone and by himself. Yes you may smoke for a longer period of time but within that time period you’re also sharing between 1 or more people depending on how big of a Hookah you have and how many hoses are setup.
Theres too many studies out there trying to prove that hookahs are worst then smoking a cigarette… Which is so wrong on so many levels. Hookah smokers dont usually smoke every day and for two hours non-stop. Cigarette smokers may smoke one cigarette then take another out and smoke another and may even go through a pack a day for their entire life, compared to that how much are hookahs smokers smoking now? Not nearly as much.
It’d take me a lifetime to write down all the additives cigarettes companies put into their tobacco before making that single cigarette. Shisha is more Natural.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
i smoke both
March 4th, 2010 at 8:52 am
“one session of hookah smoking could be equaled to almost 100 regular cigarettes, because usual cigarette needs an average of 9 puffs to be smoked and one hookah can be smoked for up to an hour with almost 20 puffs.”
um, what happened to basic math?
Wouldn’t that be “almost” 2 2/9 cigarettes?
This is stupid. There is no way that hookah has anything worse in it than cigarettes. It has barely 1% of the ingredients that cigarettes have. So, riddle me this. Let’s just put aside the facts that BURNING TOBACCO is one of the greater health factors and that, if you actually set up the hookah correctly and smoke it properly, the tobacco should never BURN. Chemistry 101, people. Heating a substance and burning it are totally different.
Now, with all of that said, if person A smokes hookah for an hour straight, and person B smokes cigarettes for an hour straight, which do you really think is going to have the more damaged lungs(gums, teeth, skin, etc)?
You noobs must sort glass as your jobs.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
non-smoking would be better )
June 5th, 2010 at 10:27 am
It wasn’t mentioned in the article, but that statistic comparing hookah smoking to cigarette smoking is based on the fact that hookah smokers tend to take in a higher volume of smoke per puff. THink about it, if you inhaled that deeply with a cigarette it’d be gone. All the same its a pretty flawed statistic. I can’t smoke cigarettes, they kill my lungs and I go into a paroxism of coughing. I was perfectly able to smoke from a hookah the first time I tried. Its not exactly conclusive proof its safe but it does suggest that the smoke from one is at least diferrent from the other. I wish there was an unbiased article out there outlining all of this but there doesn’t seem to be.
June 13th, 2010 at 12:38 am
I’ve never smoked a Hookah before but I’m concidering it now that I’m 18. I have smoked cigs and I didn’t like how they felt.
All this talks about is people smoking with tabacco. Where I am going to buy a hookah, they don’t sell tobacco. They sell an herbal molassas that’s 100% tobacco, tar, and nicotine free so people can make a choice to try it and not get addicted.
And of course a 45 minute session makes more smoke than one cigarette. Um… It’s ONE cig. Those last maybe.. 10 minutes if you’re a slow smoker, longer if you just light it and leave it.
And I agree with most of the people who posted up here. Do the math.
June 30th, 2010 at 6:53 am
What they need to realize is tar concentration is partially filtered and not building in your lungs. one container of hookah tabacco contains about 97% less nicotine than a carton of cigarettes. is any smoking healthy no not really is hookah a better alternative to cigarettes yes do your teeth stain from hookah no, do you stink from hookah no not unless someone doesn’t like that flavor. your eyes don’t go yellow, there isn’t rat poison in it people aren’t ashamed to be a hookah smoker people with a low social life become more social in the groups. but no matter what goes on there is always going to be anti believers for almost everything.
June 30th, 2010 at 7:08 am
one more thing instead of putting money into stupid studies to prove something is bad use that money to find cancers cure then we wont have to worry now will we think about it.
July 6th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
when someone tries a cigarette, they cough. This is because the tobacco is actually burning. With a hookah, the tobacco is just being heated. Every once in a while part of the hookah tobacco will burn(usually when the coal is first placed on the bowl), and this causes a very rough inhale like that of a cigarette. If tobacco in hookahs is the same of that in a cigarette, then why doesn’t it burn every time you take an inhale. A lot of people will say this is because of the amount of time it takes for the smoke to travel through the hookah, when really it is because you are not actually burning the tobacco. Also hookah tobacco does not have nearly the amount of additives in it. This makes it a lot harder to develop a hookah dependency. The only addicting thing about smoking a hookah to me is the social factor. Unlike a cigarette im not trying to get a fix. Like most of us we smoke hookah for a good time with friends.
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I agree with everyone who has left a comment so far. I have been smoking cigarettes for the past 7 months, and it burns like all hell to take anything more than half a mouthfull of a hit, but when I smoke hookah, I can fill my ENTIRE LUNG CAPACITY without it burning at ALL! That should tell you right there that there HAS to be a difference! These studies irritate me because there’s nothing but BS out there now-a-days! They smear campaign marijuana, which is actually healthier than most of the foods we eat, and now they smear Hookah, which HAS to be safer than cigarettes!