Cancer comes in a variety of fruit flavors.
Hookah smoking involves flavored tobacco, such as pina colada and cappuccino, filtered through water in a pipe and smoked through a hose. It is a common practice for ASU students, though it poses the same dangers as any other tobacco product -- including cancer.
"Young people who are smoking out of a hookah pipe believe it's a safe form of smoking," said David Bower, student health educator at ASU with a specialty in alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. "[It is] not a safe form of smoking; there is no safe form of it."
Napoly Salloum, 29, is the owner of Red Sea Hookah Lounge and said he averages about 100 customers a night, with about 45 to 50 percent of them being ASU students.
There have not been many studies on the direct dangers of hookah smoking. There is a 1964 surgeon general's report, which mentions hookah smoking contains 50 percent less toxins than cigarette smoking, Salloum said.
Salloum said hookah tobacco contains .05 percent nicotine and is filtered through a water pipe.
Bower does not think the filter is enough.
"People think water filters out carcinogens and nicotine and other dangers and that's not true," Bower said. "Carcinogens, nicotine and tar go through water."
Carcinogens are cancer-causing agents found in tobacco products.
The health risks of hookah smoking are the same as cigarette smoking, Bower said.
Smoking has been linked to cancers of the lungs, mouth, throat and kidney. It is also a "significant risk factor" for emphysema, chronic bronchitis, stroke, high blood pressure and osteoporosis, according to the American Cancer Society.
Bower said hookah has the potential to be addicting because inhalation is the fastest way to get any substance to the brain.
Biology and society sophomore Tiffany Wilkins smokes hookah socially on occasion and often sees other ASU students at the bars.
"People do it for social reasons. And for beginners it gives you a high and I know people like that high," she said.
There are four hookah bars in Tempe, all of which are operational despite the amendment to the Tempe smoking ban passed in 2002.
Andrew Ching, senior assistant city attorney for Tempe, said hookah bars were not included in the smoking ban because there is a partition between the hookah bars and places that sell food and it is a business that specializes in selling tobacco and its related products.
Reach the reporter at courtney.bonnell@asu.edu.
