Hookah: Like Smoking 40 Cigarettes and Kissing Everybody

A study in the journal Pediatrics found that nearly one-fifth of high school seniors have tried hookah. Their conclusions stated, “Adolescents of higher socioeconomic status appear to be at particularly high risk for hookah use in the United States. Prevention efforts must target this group as prevalence continues to increase.”

Hookah usage is essentially, “Equivalent to smoking 10-40 cigarettes in a single sitting, and then kissing everybody as well.”  According to the National Institutes of Health, a single session of hookah smoking “delivers 1.7 times the nicotine, 6.5 times the carbon monoxide and 46.4 times the tar of a single cigarette.” Yikes.

Dr. Marc Siegel, a doctor at NYU, suggests that the hookah habit is made worse by the fact that users often do not change the mouthpiece as they pass the inhaling device around. Any disease transmitted by kissing (mono, strep throat, colds, flu, etc.) can also be transmitted by sharing mouthpieces.

Read the original article here:
www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/07/hookah_like_smoking_40_cigarettes__kissing_everybody

Photo credit RecoveryRanch.com