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).
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.