Hookahs a Harmful Trend

The latest craze to hit college campuses are hookah bars where kids go to chill with friends, drink coffee and share a giant waterpipe (or hookah), while they sit on oversized, ornate pillows. About 43% of 744 students said they’d smoked tobacco using a hookah in the past year, according to an internet survey. Those college kids who had smoked from a hookah were more likely to believe that hookahs were not as harmful as cigarettes.

The likely reason why many kids falsely believe that smoking from a hookah is less harmful than smoking cigarettes is that the smoke is cooled by passing through a water-filled chamber before it travels through a hose and reaches the user. All those extra steps must reduce some of the negative effects of tobacco, right? Not so. Tobacco is harmful no matter what form it takes. In fact, hookahs can actually be more damaging because users tend to take bigger and longer puffs than cigarette smokers, according to researchers.

To many, it’s just another insanely unhealthy luxury a 21-year-old can afford, along with marathon drinking, all-night cramming sessions and massive quantities of pizza and burgers. Such an existence is unsustainable in “the real world.”

Your thoughts? [HealthDay]