Smoking hookah has turn into preferred among the college crowd lately and reports show that hookah is becoming well-liked among American youth as well. Globally, there are about one hundred million hookah smokers.

Hookah is a water pipe that passes tobacco smoke through water prior to it’s inhaled. The water, on the other hand, does not filter out any toxins and is just as damaging as cigarettes. Hookah is generally smoked in a group and has a wide variety of eye-catching flavors like mint, cherry, apple or coconut. The mix of the social setting and candy-like names of hookah are most likely one cause for its increasing reputation among kids. According to a study by the American Cancer Society in 2012, among higher school seniors, 17 percent have smoked hookah in the previous year.

For the reason that of the setting, a group can spend, on typical, an hour smoking hookah, generating it equivalent to about 200 puffs per person. It requires about 20 puffs to smoke a cigarette, so only one hour of smoking hookah is equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes. Hookah contains tobacco and high levels of carbon monoxide from the charcoal heating the tobacco. There is a false belief that hookah is not as dangerous as cigarettes but, in actuality, hookah smoke has the very same dangerous effects that cigarettes do. In fact, hookah can be more dangerous due to the fact of the longer time spent smoking it.

In most states, children need to be at least 18 to acquire and smoke hookah. On the other hand, most hookah bars in the United States do not call for children to be 18 to enter the premises. So it is not uncommon to see underage teens in a hookah bar possessing straightforward access to smoke and being exposed to second hand smoke.

Bottom line: Talk to your children about the harm of smoking hookah. Cachimbas Alicante may perhaps not comprehend it’s just as poor for them as smoking cigarettes.

Pioneer educator Dr. Michael Popkin, the longtime spokesman for Lorillard’s Youth Smoking Prevention Program, Real Parents, True Answers, is the founder of Active Parenting Publishers and is the author of numerous award winning video-primarily based parenting education applications.