Alcopops were yesterday – today’s youth are into hookahs. In a recent survey by the German Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA), for example, 14 percent of young people aged 12 to 17 said they had smoked hookah in the past month. In another study from Berlin’s Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, nearly one in three young people (31 percent) between the ages of 10 and 15 even said they had been circling the so-called shishas with their friends.
Advertising strategies lead to trivialization
However, the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) warns against trivializing hookah smoking in cozy gatherings. Clever advertising strategies with healthy fruit on the tobacco packs and delicious-sounding names such as fruit mix, honeydew melon or mint, as well as the allure of the unfamiliar, tempt many young people to try out hookahs.
“The hookah smoke does not taste strictly of tobacco, but of the added fruit flavors. This often seduces even non-smokers to try hookahs,” says Beate Thier, a doctor at TK. Oriental hookah bars with cozy seat cushions and brightly painted walls do the rest to make especially young people curious.
Dangerous hookah smoke
But smoking hookahs is by no means harmless: “Shishas are not a harmless alternative to cigarettes. Over the water pipe smoke one takes up more pollutants than over filterless cigarettes”, says TK physician Thier.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hookah smokers inhale about as much smoke during one shisha session as through a hundred filterless cigarettes. Moreover, since the smoke cooled by the water does not scratch the throat, it is inhaled more deeply than hot cigarette smoke. As a result, the nicotine concentration in the blood is significantly higher from smoking shishas than after consuming cigarettes.
“Nicotine is responsible for the addictive effect. That’s why smoking hookahs is dangerous as a gateway drug for young people,” says the medical expert. As a further risk of Shisha rounds Thier calls infections such as herpes or certain forms of hepatitis, which can spread over the circling mouthpiece of the water pipe. In addition, he says, tobacco imported from abroad is often contaminated and often significantly exceeds the maximum permissible levels, such as for tar.
Conclusion
The current study results show that young people are not aware of the health risks of hookah smoking – for example, among those surveyed in Berlin, only about one in three knew what the risks were. As a first step, TK therefore insists on better labeling of hookah tobacco in the same way as cigarette packs – with ingredients and warnings labeled in German.
