Smoking is bad for you. No one debates that. It clogs up your lungs, fills them with tar, makes it harder to breathe, turns your snot gray and makes kissing gross.
Then why is smoking a hookah such a common alternative to cigarettes on college campuses?
Many people are under the impression that smoking a hookah is much cleaner and healthier because you're sharing the smoke with others and it has been filtered through water.
The taste is sweet and clean, and the consistency is less heavy. It feels like steam and doesn't leave much of a lingering odor, so it must be healthier than cigarettes, right?
Don't be fooled. Smoking a hookah can be just as detrimental to your health as common cancer sticks.
A hookah is water pipe that originated in India and then spread to the Middle East - thus the iconic image of old bearded Persian men seated on cushions, passing the pipe and exhaling hoops of smoke.
Most hookahs look like tall, oddly shaped hourglasses with pipes sticking out. The hourglass part consists of a bowl, a base and a hose. At the top of the hookah, the bowl contains the tobacco, molasses and flavoring collectively known as shisha. Atop that sits a burning coal.
The hose connects the bowl to the base of the hookah, which contains some water. Another hose sticks out of the base and is attached to the mouthpiece.
The smoker inhales through the mouthpiece, sucking smoke out of the base. Air travels through the coal and then the tobacco. The hot smoke travels down the connecting pipe into the water at the base. There it is pulled through the water, out the pipe and deep into the lungs of the smoker.
It is a common belief that when the smoke is pulled through the water, all the bad chemicals are absorbed, dissolved and in general filtered out. This is not the case. The hookah smoke is still filled with nicotine and carcinogens. Many smokers experience light-headedness because of carbon monoxide.
In 2005, the World Health Organization released a report stating that use of a water pipe to smoke tobacco is not a safe alternative to cigarette smoking.
The organization reported that those who engage in typical hookah use inhale more smoke than a cigarette smoker. This is because a session of hookah-smoking is usually much longer than the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.
On average, cigarette smokers take in around half a liter of smoke per cigarette over the course of five to seven minutes. A session of hookah-smoking may last between 20 and 80 minutes, during which time the hookah smoker would inhale as much smoke as a cigarette smoker would inhale from 100 or more cigarettes.
Another downside: The water in a hookah does not absorb enough nicotine to negate its addictiveness. Inhaling tobacco smoke of any origin is bad for you because the burning of tobacco produces tar, which builds up in your lungs.
Nevertheless, smoking with water pipes has lasted as a cultural practice in societies for centuries. Young and old alike smoke hookah with friends and family on a regular basis.
But unlike addicted cigarette smokers, they don't get up in the morning thinking, "I can't get through this day without that one drag on the hookah."
Why? Because they smoke in moderation, once or twice a week, and do not hog the pipe like they need it to survive.
Cigarette smokers pause conversations to go on cigarette breaks and fight to drop their daily dose from five cigarettes to four.
Hookah smokers may look forward to that relaxing few puffs after dinner, but they surely do not bring a mini hookah to work for their lunch break. They do not depend on it.
Perhaps this moderation should be the idea behind all smoking - the occasional cigarette is much less harmful than a pack a week, and no smoking is less harmful than the occasional cigarette, or the occasional use of a hookah.
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