The popularity of hookah smoking has recently developed into a spreading inclination among today’s young adults. It has also grown into a large problem with high school students, who smoke hookah and tobacco illegally.

A hookah is a metal cylindrical device with a water pipe and smoke chamber. It has a bowl for flavored tobacco called shisha, and a hose leading to the mouth piece that one uses to draw in smoke. Shisha is heated in the chamber, and its smoke travels through water and then through a rubber tube to a mouth piece by which the user inhales the smoke.

Many people believe that smoking hookah is less detrimental to one’s health than smoking cigarettes. However, this is greatly contradicted by health experts.

According to psychiatrist Dr. David Burns, a graduate from Stanford University of Medicine, hookah smoking is both a mystery and common knowledge among doctors.

“Hookah use is something we know very little about in terms of the long-term disease consequences. But we know people are ingesting the same toxins [as in cigarette smoke], [which have] the same potential to facilitate addiction as well as the additional risk of transmitting communicable diseases by sharing the [mouth piece],” said Burns.

 It is becoming more apparent that the young adult population has an available area, including local hookah bars or cafés, where they use hookah, perhaps because hookah is thought as an alternative to cigarettes.

While the common belief among the general public is that smoking from a hookah is healthier than cigarettes, many strongly disagree with this idea. The water in a hookah does not filter out the toxins like the filter on a cigarette does. In fact, a hookah smoker may very well inhale more tobacco than a cigarette smoker. Additionally, a hookah smoker will inhale a larger volume of smoke in one session—up to sixty minutes of continuous use—as opposed to the few minutes that someone may smoke a cigarette. A cigarette’s filter performs its job in taking out most of the toxins with it, making the drugs in the cigarette less potent; to the smoker, while a hookah does nothing to stop the chemicals and toxins from entering the smoker’s body.  

Hookah contains the same toxins as cigarettes, but in a more concentrated from. Hookah, like cigarettes contains the same carcinogens such as tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals, and carcinogens. Hookah smokers have also shown to be exposed to more carbon monoxide compared to exposure for cigarette smokers.

Hookah smokers are exposed to the same amount of nicotine as cigarette smokers, which can lead to addiction. Secondhand smoke remains a threat to others.

Owners of several local hookah bars denied commenting on the subject.  

While the effects of hookah are still under investigation, it has been proven that hookah still leads to lung disease and cancer.

While the controversy over which form of smoking tobacco is safer for the user, both affect the health of individuals in harmful ways.