Experts Say the Hookah Poses Much More Danger To Health Than Conventional Cigarettes

ISSUE AT STAKE: DEMONIZING THE HOOKAH AND ITS USERS (who are not aliens but terrestrial human beings...)

Israel is very concerned. Read what US, Israeli and Arab experts gathered in Cyprus decided last week:

“If Israel makes it a priority, it "can make smoking history" by reducing the top public health problem in the country to negligible levels, said a US expert on Monday. Prof. Gregory Connolly, a tobacco control expert at the Harvard School of Public Health in Israel to advise the Health Ministry's Healthy Israel 2020 project on preventing disease and promoting good health, was a guest at a special two-day conference of anti-smoking experts at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, organized under the auspices of the ministry and sponsored in part by the US Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute”

“A special meeting in Cyprus last week of anti-tobacco experts from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Israel and others - which was sponsored by the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute - overcame political boundaries in their opposition to smoking. The participants learned that hookah (water pipe) smoking, which originated in Arab countries, has spread throughout the Western world, including Israel, and poses MUCH more danger to health than conventional cigarettes, even though the hookah has an image of being less harmful because the smoke is filtered through water.”

Note: Bold characters and word "much" in capitals letters by Editorial team.

Source: “Israel can kick the smoking habit”, by Judy SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH for the Jerusalem Post dated 2006-03-09.

OUR COMMENTS:
Hookah would be "MUCH more dangerous" than cigarettes ? When a single hookah session, with extreme (and individual) artificial puffing parameters, yields:

- the nicotine equivalent of a single cigarette... So, this would mean that sitting for a hookah every saturday night in your garden would equate, according to their silly “comparisons”, smoking a single cigarette a week ? Not to mention those users who share the hose… And you would become “addicted to nicotine” this way ? Ain’t they living in Wonderland or are we boobies who must trust these so-called experts ? Isn’t this intellectual terrorism ?

- quantities of tar that sure are much less dangerous simply because they are produced at hundreds and hundred of degrees under the burning tip temperature of a cigarette!

Hookah would be "MUCH more dangerous" than cigarettes ?

-because it waters down dangerous carcinogens (a taboo issue in fashionable studies)?
-because the majority of users in the world, over the past four centuries to date, are not dependent and use it on occasions ?

If these so-called experts mean Western cigarettes (“conventional cigarette” !), then we are skeptical of their affiliations as tobacco control activists. Aren't they serving the interests of the Pharmaceutical or even Tobacco Industry ?

Consulted independent source in Europe says: "Demonizing this way is the best method to make the new habit even more popular and even more dangerous !"

CONCLUSION:

HOOKAH SMOKING, AS ANY INHALATION (IF ANY) OF OTHER THINGS THAN AIR, CERTAINLY INVOLVES HEALTH RISKS. HOWEVER DON’T COUNT ON THESE OFFICIAL EXPERTS TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT REAL HOOKAH SMOKING. COULDN'T THEY CARE LESS ABOUT PREVENTION ?

WHAT MAY ACTUALLY DISTURBS THEM IS NOT YOUR HEALTH BUT THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL MEANING OF A NEW HABIT IN THEIR STUBBORNLY HIDEBOUND WORLD.

SO HOOKAH SMOKERS ARE INVITED NOT TO TEACH OLD CIGARETTE SMOKING DOGS NEW TRICKS.

SEE ALSO ALL-OUT CRITIQUES OF TOP STUDIES ON HOOKAH SMOKING AT :

http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/eletters/ckl043v1#18

and

http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/15/suppl_1/i24#top

Image: courtesy of www.trade-express.com

in FRENCH: Chicha et santé : pillage intellectuel et pseudo-science


YOU ARE NOT ON THE HOME PAGE of the OBSERVATORY on HOOKAH and HEALTH (Narghile, "Waterpipe", Health, Risks, Dangers, Diseases, Tar, Nicotine, Cancer). CLICK HERE to go there !