What are pipes and hookahs?

Marijuana Pipes

Pipe smoking is a traditional method for smoking marijuana (dried leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant), ganja (sap-carrying tops of female cannabis), and hashish (dried resin from cannabis flowers). Using the traditional pipe, the chillum, four or five people gather around the pipe to smoke marijuana, tobacco, or a mixture of the two.

Another marijuana pipe is the one-hitter, a miniature smoking-pipe with a screened bowl designed for a single “hit” (inhalation) of marijuana. The screen catches the ash but allows the cannabinoids, which are an active component of marijuana, to pass through easily when burnt. So-called “stealth” pipes, which are designed to camouflage or hide the pipe, are designed to look like markers, fountain pens, flashlights, and bracelets, for example.

Marijuana also can be smoked through a water pipe. The water-pipe smoker burns marijuana in the head of the pipe. The base is partially filled with water. The smoker inhales through a hose and draws smoke down through the water. The smoke bubbles up out of the water and into the smoker’s mouth. A bong is a small water pipe with a water filtration system. Hookahs are water pipes used to smoke tobacco.

Hookahs and Tobacco

Hookahs are ornately made pipes that come in many shapes and are made from various materials, such as brier (a thorny plant), stone, clay, wood, porcelain, meerschaum (a soft white mineral), metal, and glass. Hookahs are thought to have originated in Africa or Asia as early as the fourteenth century. People in the Middle East have been smoking hookah since the early seventeenth century.

Maassel is the most common type of tobacco smoked in a hookah. The sweet tobacco is fermented in molasses and fruit to produce many flavors, such as cherry, apple, blackberry, grape, orange, and mint. Groups of people meet at hookah bars, coffeehouses, and restaurants, which are often exempt from laws that prohibit smoking indoors. The water pipe can be shared as it is passed from one person to another, or it can be used by an individual smoker.

People who smoke tobacco with a hookah believe it to be safer than smoking cigarettes. The smoke is indeed mild, but it is high in nicotine. Smoke from a single session of hookah (commonly thirty to sixty minutes) exceeds the nicotine content of a cigarette. Hookah smokers believe that the water in the pipe filters the nicotine, but the water in this type of pipe filters less than 5 percent of the nicotine from the smoke, leaving enough nicotine to make hookah smoking addictive.

Tobacco from a hookah is burned at a lower temperature than a cigarette, encouraging the smoker to inhale deeply and, thereby, pull more smoke into the lungs. The smoke contains twenty times more tar than the smoke of a cigarette, and the hookah produces as much smoke as more than one hundred cigarettes. The nicotine absorption is equivalent to smoking ten cigarettes per day.

Furthermore, the charcoal used to heat the tobacco in the hookah pipe produces toxic fumes. Hookah smokers are exposed to twice the level of carbon monoxide as cigarette smokers. Being exposed to secondhand smoke from a hookah may be just as dangerous as from a cigarette.

Smoking hookah may lead to health problems that include heart disease, lung cancer, respiratory diseases, and decreased fertility. Pregnant women are more likely to have babies with low birth-weights. Viruses such as herpes simplex and Epstein-Barr are potentially spread by sharing hookah pipe mouthpieces.

In the United States hookah smoking is popular with college students, who consider the method safer and more acceptable than smoking cigarettes. The students perceive hookahs as novel, exotic, sensual, relaxing, and intimate. It is a social event promoting conversation among friends. Smoking hookah also is popular among teenagers.

Bibliography

Barnett, Tracey E., et al. “Water Pipe Tobacco Smoking among Middle and High School Students.” American Journal of Public Health 99.11 (2009): 2014–19. Print. Examines water-pipe use among middle and high school students.

Beresteine, Leslie. “Healthy or Not, the Hookah Habit Is Hot.” Time 161 (2003): 10. Print. Reports on hookah use among college students.

Kandela, Peter. “Nargile Smoking Keeps Arabs in Wonderland.” The Lancet 356 (2000): 1175. Discusses the cultural importance of hookah smoking and the potential hazards.

Maziak, Wasim. “The Waterpipe: Time for Action.” Addiction 103 (2008): 1763–67. Print. Discusses public health issues among hookah smokers.

Noonan, Devon. “Exemptions for Hookah Bars in Clean Indoor Air Legislation: A Public Health Concern.” Public Health Nursing 27.1 (2010): 49–53. Print. Examines legal exemptions for smoking hookah pipes in indoor settings.

Noonan, Devon, and Pamela A. Kulbok. “New Tobacco Trends: Waterpipe (Hookah) Smoking and Implications for Healthcare Providers.” Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners 21 (2009): 258–60. Print. Discusses hookah smoking from the clinical perspective.

Primack, Brian A., et al. “Prevalence of and Associations with Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking among US University Students.” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 36 (2008): 81–86. Print. Results of a study that investigated the prevalence of hookah smokers among college students.