Hookah is piping hot
Mideast tradition adds flavor to big-city bars
U.S. Spends $1 Million Researching Syrians ‘Hooked on Hookahs’
July 28, 2008
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
(CNSNews.com) – ‘Hoookah,’ ‘nargile,’ ‘hubbly-bubbly’ — all names for the waterpipe, a smoking instrument typically found in the Middle East in which tobacco smoke is drawn through water and cooled before the smoke is sucked into the mouth through a tube.
For the last several years, U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $1 million to fund research on waterpipes and waterpipe use in studies being conducted at the Syrian Center for Tobacco Study, in Aleppo, Syria.
“We’ve done some studies in Syria just looking at the prevalence of it in the general population, and in average groups like college students,”
researcher Ken Ward of the University of Memphis Department of Health and Sport Sciences, told CNSNews.com.
researcher Ken Ward of the University of Memphis Department of Health and Sport Sciences, told CNSNews.com.
Ward and his associates in Syria have received a number of grants from the federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) over the years for research on waterpipes – $21,000 for a project that ended in 2007; $326,000 in 2006 to establish the Syrian Center for Tobacco Study; $334,000 for center projects in 2004; and $438,000 in 2005.
“Right now we’re doing an intervention study in Syria, looking at how to help people who are interested in quitting to actually quit permanently,” he said.
Ward said he and his research partners have been conducting clinical laboratory studies on Syrians looking at the potential for dependence on smoking hookahs.
“Essentially, in those areas, we’ve had people who use waterpipes regularly to undergo a period of abstinence, 24 hours or so, come into the lab and we monitor the withdrawal symptoms, and then we monitor what happens after they take some waterpipe,” Ward said, with the goal of finding out if smoking a waterpipe suppresses withdrawal symptoms.
The research is being done largely in Syria, he said, because waterpipes have been used there for centuries. But waterpipe use has become a problem in the United States, affecting about 20 to 25 percent of college and high school students, he said.
“In Syria, we find that approximately 30 percent of college students have used it, more than 60 percent report ever having used it,” Ward told CNSNews.com. “Rates are even higher in Lebanon and Israel.”
CNSNews.com asked Ward, if, given the fact that we know that cigarette smoke is harmful, do we need to study what we know intuitively to be
true: that waterpipes likely are as harmful as cigarettes?
true: that waterpipes likely are as harmful as cigarettes?
“That does make intuitive sense, and the research being done does support that – but that message doesn’t seem to be getting out to young people who are using it,” Ward said. “Some of the comments we hear is that, ‘If it was dangerous, they wouldn’t be selling it.’ Of course, that’s not true for cigarettes and it’s also not true for waterpipes.”
Conservative taxpayer groups like Citizens Against Government Waste
(CAGW) say that even if the research is a good idea, it is not necessarily something that U.S. tax dollars need to fund.
(CAGW) say that even if the research is a good idea, it is not necessarily something that U.S. tax dollars need to fund.
“Why is the federal taxpayer always the one who has to pay for this?”
said CAGW Vice President David Williams. “We question whether this is a national priority to figure out the problems of other countries. Let’s figure out our problems and solve those.”
said CAGW Vice President David Williams. “We question whether this is a national priority to figure out the problems of other countries. Let’s figure out our problems and solve those.”
Part of the problem, Williams said, is that the NIH has access to many billions of dollars.
“What you have is a bunch of experts that sit around and they shake their heads, and they say, ‘Yeah, this is a good idea, let’s do research on this. Let’s have some blockbuster results,’” he said.
“Unfortunately, one of the truly blockbuster results (of the budget
process) is that we have a huge deficit and national debt that taxpayers are saddled with,” said Williams.
process) is that we have a huge deficit and national debt that taxpayers are saddled with,” said Williams.
“That’s where you have to draw the line on this kind of research and really evaluate whether or not the decision-making process, when it comes to these grants, is really solid, and whether we need to reevaluate,” he said.
The Syrian studies have been funded through the NIH’s Fogarty International Center, a branch of the federal health service that has been paying for international scientific research for the last 40 years.
In FY 2009, the Fogarty Center is slated to receive $66 million.
In FY 2009, the Fogarty Center is slated to receive $66 million.
Hookah is piping hot
Mideast tradition adds flavor to big-city bars
Mideast tradition adds flavor to big-city bars
Jan. 10, 2006
By Hugo Kugiya
By Hugo Kugiya
he Rabbit Hole is a maze of sofas and sectionals, mismatched, some worn to threads in places, full of soft spots that sink low to the ground. The lighting is low and dim; the music is usually alternative rock, played at a volume to match the light.
No alcohol is served at the Rabbit Hole – just soft drinks, and hookah.
Hookah is a flavored tobacco, inhaled through a tall, ornate pipe that sits on the floor; it has long been a popular pastime all across the Mideast.
But this is Roosevelt Way in Seattle. And that is something new – even as America is at war in the Mideast, this bit of the Mideast has found a place in America.
In liberal and literate Seattle, hookah lounges have opened on trendy downtown blocks and in predominantly white neighborhoods in the outer city, where the Rabbit Hole is located. Its customers are not middle-aged Egyptian men, but white kids from the suburbs.
“I’d almost call it an epidemic,” said Sean O’Neill, 20, a personal trainer who lives in Tacoma, Wash., and first tried hookah last spring.
The contagion might stall – in November, Washington voters enacted one of the nation’s strictest smoking bans. The law could shutter places like the Rabbit Hole; similar smoking bans could imperil hookah parlors around the country.
The laws are universally aimed at cigarette smoking; they might not specifically target hookah, but there is not exception for the parlors, either.
The parlors first opened in the United States decades ago in the immigrant quarters of New York and Los Angeles, in neighborhoods like Astoria, Queens, and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. For years, they were patronized mostly by men of Egyptian, Lebanese or Syrian descent, and occasionally a curious American who recognized the pipes from a trip he might have taken.
In the past year or two, parlors have opened in college towns all over the country, in Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin, often operated by foreign students from the Mideast, wishing for a piece of home.
But in recent months, hookah has spread to the world of hipsters and yuppies in all regions of the country. Customers can smoke hookah in the Chi-Cha Lounge, a trendy, Latin-themed restaurant on U Street in Washington D.C., or at Mantra, an upscale French-Indian restaurant in Boston’s Ladder District.
At the Chicago nightclub Zentra, hookah can be smoked amid techno music and belly dancers wearing body paint. There are hookah lounges in Denver, Houston, Las Vegas and Miami, complete with glass tables, plasma televisions and oxygen bars.
“It’s at its largest demand ever in this country,” said Brennan Appel, who runs Florida-based SouthSmoke.com, an online purveyor of hookah pipes and tobacco. “I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. … Only a small percentage of Americans know about it.”
In cities where only one hookah lounge existed, there are now seven or eight, Appel said. Where there were none, there is at least one. Because hookah is typically shared, friends introduce it to others. Even the Iraq war has played some role, Appel said; he suspects soldiers posted in the Gulf tried hookah, liked it and sought it out after they returned home.
“I haven’t yet heard of a hookah lounge opening and going out of business,” Appel said. The biggest demand for hookah, he said, is in California, Arizona, New York, Texas and Virginia.
Most of the tobacco is imported from the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia; as a way of catering to Western tastes, tobacco manufacturers are introducing flavors like kiwi, watermelon and blackberry. Handcrafted pipes made of glass and brass are produced in Syria and Egypt, although China is making less expensive pipes out of acrylic.
The tobacco is held in a bowl near the top of the pipe, kept lit by red-hot charcoal. The smoke is drawn through water before being sucked through a long tube. Pipes can have one tube, or as many as six, so that many people can share the tobacco.
Pipes cost between $50 and $180. In lounges and bars, the tobacco is sold in batches for as little as $5 or as much as $20. One batch can last a person an hour or longer.
“I can smoke hookah at home, but coming here is like a treat,” said Brenda Wright, 20, one of a group of friends who visit the Rabbit Hole several times a week. “I’ve noticed it’s gotten a lot more popular just in the past two months.”
Friday and Saturday nights at the Rabbit Hole are so crowded, some people (many of them are students from the nearby University of Washington) end up sitting on the floor. The other nights are for the regulars, many younger than 21.
The scene is different at the Egyptian CafDe on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens. On most nights, the clientele in the Egyptian CafDe is predominantly Mideastern. There are few frills, just chairs and small tables and men poring over backgammon and dominos.
The time spent in the immigrant hookah lounges is workaday and routine. Said Elmekabati, 35, a businessman from Brooklyn, often entertains clients at the Egyptian CafDe. Hesham Amin comes here almost everyday. It is like an extension of his living room – Starbucks, but with smoke.
Amin, 38, who was raised in Alexandria, Egypt, is a customer. Sometimes, he says, he sees more Americans than Egyptians.
“Everybody comes here,” he said, pointing the direction of a young couple canoodling in a corner. Jose Ocampo is 19; Sanjana Chowdhury is 18. Hookah, for them, was an acquired taste. The smoke made them light-headed. But they grew fond of the flavor.
“At first I came here so I could spend time with him,” Chowdhury said. “Now I’m not sure if I’m addicted to the hookah or addicted to him.”
There has been some backlash to the hookah craze. In Anaheim, Calif., city officials attempted to regulate some hookah lounges after complaints by neighbors of noise and rowdiness. The owners, primarily Mideastern immigrants, accused officials of cultural bias.
But the biggest problem for owners of hookah parlors are smoking bans in many cities. New York’s 2003 ban, at first, did practically nothing to limit the hookah dens in Astoria and Bay Ridge. Although the places violated the law, officials generally looked the other way since it was obvious that customers frequent hookah bars only to smoke, and because the ban was not aimed at hookah smokers. The future of hookah and smoking bans is still unresolved. For right now, it is a matter of case-by-case enforcement.
The effect of hookah on health is an issue. Medical research is scarce on the effects of smoking hookah, although doctors agree that smoking any kind of tobacco is not healthy.
“It’s worthy of scientific study,” said Dr. Norman Edelman with the American Lung Association. “I can tell you none have been planned. But it is tobacco. And all tobacco contains any number of chemicals that are harmful.”
Users claim that because hookah smoke is drawn through water contained in the pipe, the smoke is less harmful – an assertion that doctors say has no merit.
“People in my country have been smoking hookah for centuries,” Amin said. “I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick and dying.”
