Prototype Issue
Hookah's Innocense Lost
By Joyce Jaing
(page 1 of 1)Inhale. The water bubbles in the pipe. Eyes are closed. The laughter and music sound distant. The hookah tastes strong. Exhale. The stress from work and school just seems to melt off.
This trend of gathering around to smoke flavored tobacco, which originated in the Middle East, has been a form of social gathering for people in their 20s because of the relaxing atmosphere the lounge offers.
“Atmosphere is everything,” said Jeff Dion, a nursing major and social smoker at Cal State Long Beach. “There has to be a lot of people, good music so you can just sit back, relax, and take a puff of that hookah.” Exhale Café in Long Beach is just one of the many new hookah lounges that have been popping up in college towns across the country in recent years.
Upon walking in, people might think that they walked into the wrong place. It’s an empty room except for a pool table in a corner and counters filled with hookah supplies to the right. As the hostess leads you to the doorway of the smoking section, a large dark patio opens up. Dark drapes border the walls.
Old hip hop music videos blare from two large plasma TVs that grace the adjacent walls. A painting composed of many women come together to form the silhouette of a woman’s head. Even though it’s cold outside, the warm smoke makes it a comfortable setting. White sofas line the walls and many small tables litter the patio floor.
The lounge is buzzing tonight, alive with the conversations of couples and laughter among college students who have come here to unwind. Everyone is sitting except for a man walking around with a net bearing blazing coal to refresh the heat source at every hookah pipe. The fresh coal is placed at the top of the hookah pipe. It’s time to get the night going. Although many people come for the peaceful surroundings, non-traditional smokers often wonder if smoking hookah is just as bad as smoking cigarettes.
“Seventy percent of the crowd comes here to kick it because they just want to hang out. They want to kill time so they smoke for half hour and chit chat,” said Karim Mans, owner of Exhale Café.
Many hookah smokers believe that since the tobacco is filtered through the water base, that it poses no real danger. However, the myth has been proven wrong. According to a 2007 World Health Organization advisory, an hour smoking session of hookah “exposes the user to 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette.” Even though it is filtered, the smoke still produces high levels of carcinogens, carbon monoxide and nicotine.
Mans has a different opinion on that warning. “It [hookah smoking] doesn’t do anything unless you smoke the whole pipe. I know a lot of people who do it and nothing happened to them. There are no tar and no second hand smoke from it,” he said.
Dr. Thomas Eissenberg of the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University has said on their website that studies have shown there is more nicotine in water pipes than in a cigarette. The same study shows that water pipe smoke has more tar and carbon monoxide than cigarettes. Using a hookah pipe for 30 to 45 minutes produces a more significant amount of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide than a five minute cigarette break.
According to Mans, there is only a small amount of nicotine in the hookah tobacco he uses and the hookah could vary at different hookah lounges. “We scrub and clean our pipes every week here. That determines how much tobacco customers are actually receiving. That’s why the flavors are stronger. It could taste different in other lounges,” Mans said. The dirty pipes are clogged with leftover tobacco and could determine the overall taste and consequences a user could be getting.
So what is hookah? Mans said hookah is “dried up tobacco mixed with different flavors, but it’s not the same as a cigarette.”
Gathering around to smoke a hookah pipe consists of taking a puff and passing the hose to the next patron. People just sit around, talk and unwind. Many people question the effects of hookah smoking but like many other social problems, many college students choose to forget the consequences until later.
The main target for hookah lounges that have spread across the United Kingdom, United States and Canada are college students. This rings true on Wednesday nights for Cal State Long Beach students as Exhale Café offers a hookah pipe for $8 when it is usually $12.
Hookah has been a tradition for countries such as Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa for centuries but has slowly risen in popularity in the United States.
“We have one in our house, because every Armenian I know has one in their house. It’s not part of our culture, we just adopted it,” Nora Injeyan, an undeclared sophomore and causal smoker, said.
Although the information is out there for everyone to find, the looming consequences is definitely not the kryptonite to the Superman complex that young people have. Just as most social drinkers know that liver failure is a possibility, drunken memories are still being made. Hookah lounges offer a stress reliever setting after a long day of droning work. The exotic and soothing nature of sharing a pipe with a group of friends draws many ordinary folks.
“It’s kind of communal, sharing a pipe and bonding,” Injeyan said.
Exhale Cafe, 674 Redondo Ave., Long Beach, 1-866-SMOKE-69, www.exhalecafe.com.
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