Dangers of shisha smoking come into focus
AL AIN // There are a number of things Isam Tareef loves about living in the UAE, and spending his evenings enjoying a lemon-and-mint-flavoured shisha after a long day at work tops the list.
“It’s a newfound obsession for me. I just love it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and opening his palms in a sign of resignation. “I’ve become a slave to the tobacco pipe.”
In New York, he said, he was always going out with colleagues after work. “Now, that’s been replaced with a relaxing evening of shisha.”
Ever since arriving in Abu Dhabi in 2008, Mr Tareef, 37, a Lebanese engineer with a petroleum company, has indulged in a tobacco water pipe daily – sometimes two or three times a day. Yesterday’s announcement of a federal smoking ban may make his habit a little more difficult to pursue, however.
“My shishas can’t be as bad for me as cigarettes, right?” he said. “I mean sure, it might be a bit unhealthy, but definitely not as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.” Mr Tareef is far off the mark.
Dr Rima Nakkash, research professor in the health management and policy department of the faculty of health sciences in the American University of Beirut, said the risks from shisha smoking were severe and long-term effects still unclear.
“In a typical one-hour session, water-pipe smoke delivers as much tar as an entire pack of cigarettes,” she said yesterday on the third day of the Global Health and the UAE: Asia-Middle East Connections conference at UAE University in Al Ain.
Dr Nakkash, who heads a tobacco control research group in Beirut, said smoking shisha was not a safe alternative to smoking cigarettes. “This is becoming a global health issue,” she said.
“People travel and cross borders, and any addictive behaviour they learn, they spread it wherever they go, so now you find what is known as hookah bars near universities in the UK, in the US, in Canada, all over.”
Research by the World Health Organisation’s study group on tobacco product regulation conducted in 2005 found that one session of smoking a water pipe could be as dangerous as smoking up to 100 cigarettes. This finding is disturbing, she said, because shisha is seen as fashionable and more acceptable than cigarettes among women.
In her research among smokers in four Middle Eastern countries, Dr Nakkash found a propensity for shisha smoking among women and youths in particular.
“Youths start smoking water pipes because it is socially acceptable and much more permissible than cigarettes, and for women, it is a fashionable trend,” she said.
Dr Nakkash said the fear was that people were starting to smoke too early in life. “We know that shisha smoke contains carcinogens and toxicants like cigarettes, but there are no extensive studies on the long-term effects yet,” she said, “though we predict the same type of health problems that are associated with cigarette smoking.”
Additionally, the nicotine in shisha is not filtered through the water, as smokers mistakenly believe, making the habit addictive.
Shisha smoking is socially acceptable, affordable and accessible, and people just do not know the truth about it, Dr Nakkash said, adding that enforcing bans on smoking indoors and in closed spaces and ensuring that society complied by these bans was the first step to tackling the problem.
Indeed, the law signed by Sheikh Khalifa yesterday places major restrictions on not just indoor spaces but cafes in or near residential areas. Those younger than 18 also are prohibited from partaking.
“But you have to be aware that you can never ban any kind of tobacco use, whether cigarettes or shisha,” she said. “What you can do is regulate it in a way to protect the non-smoker and make sure that smokers are consciously aware of what they are getting into.”
The dangers of shisha smoking, the conference participants agreed, needed to be addressed urgently.
“We know it’s spreading,” Dr Nakkash said. “We don’t have to wait to see its long-term effects on health before speaking up about it, and loudly.”
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