Hookah: Social Factors Causing Skewed Perceptions of the Tobacco Product
Tobacco is undeniably the largest legal drug in the world, with millions addicted to tobacco despite the clear negative effects it can have on people’s health. Hookah is a tobacco product that has increased in popularity in recent years due to its prevalence in college social scenes and bars across America. The biggest problem is that hookah’s dangers are often overlooked by people who use it because they assume it is a less dangerous form of tobacco.
For example, a study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research conducted an online survey in 2013 of US adults and collected data from the survey. The study found that “Odds for hookah use were greater for those who perceived regular pipe/hookah use as less dangerous (P < .05). Odds for hookah involvement were higher among young adults (P < .001), individuals with higher educational attainment (P < .01)” (Cavazos-Rehg, et al. 2015). Therefore, it is clear that college students are more susceptible to hookah’s effects because of misinformation and the assumption that hookah is less dangerous than other tobacco products.
Furthermore, a study published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention found that “Most of them (71-80%) had misperception about the safety of hookah smoking over cigarette smoking and 54-82% participants were unaware of health effects” (Kakodkar, et al. 2013), and a study conducted in Nicotine & Tobacco Research found that “Approximately 19% of respondents believed that smoking hookah was less harmful than smoking cigarettes. Significant risk indicators for smoking hookah were being younger than 22 years” (Jamil, et al. 2010).
In conjunction with people’s misinformation, hookah also has its own negative health effects. For example, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that “patrons of hookah cafes had significantly higher CO levels (mean=30.8 parts per million [ppm]) compared to patrons of traditional bars (mean=8.9 ppm)” which shows that hookah has the potential to more than triple CO levels in human beings.
People are aware of the risks that come with smoking hookah, but are negligent of its safety in comparison to cigarettes
Lastly, a study published in the Annual Clinical Journal of Dental Health collected data from a survey and found that while 88% of people considered that there were health risks associated with smoking hookah, nearly half (47%) of the people in the survey assumed that smoking hookah was safer than smoking cigarettes. It is clear that due to hookah’s popularity as a social activity, even when people are aware of the harmful components that may be present in hookah, people fail to consider the consequences smoking hookah can have on health.
While hookah becomes more and more popular in the social scenes of college towns and urban neighborhoods, it is clear that people are misinformed about the harmful effects of its use. Many people assume that it is safer than smoking tobacco cigarettes, when in reality they don’t know for certain, but make the assumption due to things like its variety of flavors and seemingly harmless portrayal.
Works Cited
Barnett TE, Curbow BA, Soule EK, et al. Carbon Monoxide Levels Among Patrons of Hookah Cafes. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Vol 40, p 324-328. 2011.
Cavazos-Rehg PA, Krauss MJ, Kim Y, et al. Risk Factors Associated With Hookah Use. Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Vol 18. 2015.
Jamil H, Elsouhag D, Hiller S, et al. Sociodemographic risk indicators of hookah smoking among White Americans: A pilot study. Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Vol 18. 2010.
Kakodkar PV, Bansal, SS. Hookah Smoking: Characteristics, Behavior and Perceptions of Youth Smokers in Pune, India. Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention. Vol 14, p 4319-4323. 2013.
Khan M. Are waterpipe smokers aware that there are health risks associated with waterpipe smoking? Annual Clinical Journal of Dental Health. Vol 4, p 1-52. 2015.
