Manipal Hookah Smoking – ‘good smoking’?

The recent raid by the Bangalore Municipality on a bar that sold hookah to children, was the coup de grâce on the illicit sale of hookah in the city.

As much as it is disheartening that school children were splurging on such vices, it was irresponsible and spiteful on the media’s part to telecast the raid – jeopardizing the emotional stability and future of these students.  The media once again proved its obsession to TRPs, and chose to treat the students like men stalled at a brothel. However, any moral policing is always unwarranted. Here’s the best hookahs guide.

Is Hookah really ‘good smoking’?

Some people think Hookah is fruit juice vapours (Yes, a whole percentage of naïve people).  Some think it’s highly diluted tobacco and thus harmless. Many believe that it is healthy and nutritious substitute for cigarettes. For many, hookah or shish is a matter of social image and the ‘coolness quotient’, and of course making the opposite gender go gaga with the smoke rings.

Whether they are ignorant of the lethal implications or pretending to be so – it is not for us to comment. Manipal, for its part, has hookah parlous aplenty, that are ever-ready to cash in on the student community’s demand. It is our moral responsibility to spread the word about its harmful impact, and expose the truth that is hiding behind the façade of ‘fruit juice’ and ‘coolness’.

Harmful Impacts of Hookah (Medically proven facts)

• 45 minutes of hookah smoking is equal to smoking 50 tobacco cigarettes.

•   Water-pipe smokers inhale more smoke resulting in more exposure to cancer causing chemicals and hazardous gases such as carbon monoxide

•   As with cigarette smoking, hookah smoking is linked to lung and oral cancers, heart disease and other serious illnesses.

• Smokers who share the mouthpiece on a hookah pipe risk catching a contagious disease from one another. The contagious disease can be a simple cold or flu virus or it can be something more serious, such as herpes.

• Hookah smoke has high levels of toxic compounds, including tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens).

• It has been proved that hookah smoke is equal in the performance to cigarette smoke to cause unworthy damage to genetic cells present in human body.

• Hookah results in severe addiction and dependence.

• Smoking tobacco from a Hookah can result in a variety of oral problems. A Hookah smoker’s teeth may become stained from the tar he inhales in the smoke. Bad breath is also a side effect of Hookah smoking.

“Hookah is a very safe unlike smoking” – a myth that remains unbroken among youngsters. Hookah is NOT FRUIT JUICE. We are mature adults, edging out of our teens and capable of making decisions. It is therefore purely  up to us, whether the myth remains one, or whether we look yonder.