Hookahs falsely portrayed as just as dangerous as cigarettes

Cross posted at The Smoking Room

The war on smoking seems to be spreading to those forms that are casual and infrequent, like Arabic water pipes (hookahs):

“There’s a myth that the smoke is filtered by the water,” says Thomas Eissenberg, a psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-author of a hookah study. The smoke passes through gurgling water before the user inhales it, but, he says, “Every risk of cigarette smoking is also associated with water pipes.”

But as Hit & Run explains, going back to the hookah study, the level of risk is far different between cigarettes and hookahs, or even cigars and other infrequently-smoked pleasures. The American Cancer Society, as purely opposed to any tobacco as MADD has morphed into opposing any drinking, subtly concedes there’s a far lower risk from hookah-smoking, lowered further still for the average infrequent smoker. Interesting how secular prudishness rises in one area (”public health”) as it declines in another (sexual morality).