Pipes and hookahs
Pipes and hookahs are smoking devices that have cultural significance and varying health implications. Pipes, often made of materials like glass or metal, can be used to smoke substances such as marijuana or tobacco. Common types include the chillum, which is typically shared among a group, and the one-hitter, designed for single inhalations. Hookahs, traditionally associated with tobacco, consist of a bowl, a water vessel, and a hose, allowing users to inhale flavored tobacco, known as shisha. While some users perceive hookahs as a safer alternative to cigarettes, research indicates that they may deliver high levels of nicotine and tar, with significant health risks including heart disease and respiratory issues.
Hookah bars have gained popularity in the U.S., particularly among college students and young adults, serving as social venues for communal smoking experiences. However, trends in hookah use have fluctuated, showing a decline among high school students in recent years. Despite their perceived novelty and social appeal, public health experts caution against the potential for nicotine addiction linked to hookah smoking. Regulations around hookah bars have also evolved, with some cities imposing restrictions amid rising health concerns. This overview provides a glimpse into the cultural practices, health implications, and social dynamics surrounding pipes and hookahs.
Subject Terms
Pipes and hookahs
- ALSO KNOWN AS: Bong; chillum; nargile; shisha; water pipe
DEFINITION: Pipes used to smoke marijuana consist of a bowl made of a heat-resistant material such as stone, glass, ivory, metal, or clay. At the funnel-shaped base of the bowl, the smoker places marijuana, tobacco, or a mixture of the two and then burns the mixture, drawing through the pipe to inhale the smoke. Hookahs, traditionally used to smoke tobacco, include a heat-resistant bowl, a shaft that connects the bowl to a water vessel, and a hose through which the smoker draws the smoke. While several drugs can be smoked through a pipe or hookah, such as crack cocaine, methamphetamine, opioids, and phencyclidine (PCP), this article will focus on marijuana and tobacco.
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, designed to camouflage or hide the pipe, look like markers, fountain pens, flashlights, and bracelets, for example.
Marijuana can also 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 traditionally used to smoke tobacco or flavored blends of tobacco and sweeteners, often known as shisha.
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 hookahs 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 an individual smoker can use it.
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. However, 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 US, 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 is also increasingly popular among teenagers.
Hookah Bars
Hookah bars, also known as hookah lounges, increased in popularity in the West, including the US, in the early twenty-first century. Most visible in large cities, the rise of such establishments has been linked to increases in Middle Eastern ethnic populations and a receptive market among young adults. CNN estimated that about three hundred hookah bars existed in the US in 2007, while by 2014, several major urban areas alone had hundreds in operation, and they were increasingly common even in smaller cities.
This growth came even as overall US smoking rates declined sharply, and the particular popularity of hookah smoking among young people led many experts to speculate that the trend could contribute to a spike in nicotine addiction and eventual cigarette use in certain demographics. This trend was also enhanced by the growing popularity of vaping among youths. However, hookah use began to decline in the late 2010s. In 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 7.8 percent of high school students in 2018 used hookahs to smoke tobacco in the previous year, while 12.3 percent of adults aged nineteen to thirty used one of the pipes to smoke tobacco. Hookah use among high school seniors had risen to 22.9 percent in 2014. This decline continued into the 2020s as, in 2023, only 4.1 percent of high school students reported using a hookah, according to the American Lung Association.
Analysts noted that the spread of hookah bars coincided with the rise of anti-smoking legislation in urban areas, which water pipes were often able to skirt thanks to loopholes or lack of specific regulation. However, as the popularity of hookahs became more widely covered in the media, some communities eliminated such loopholes or took other measures to restrict hookah bars. For example, in 2017, the New York City Council voted to ban any new hookah bars from opening and prevent existing establishments from moving or expanding within the city. This ban remained in effect in the mid-2020s.
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