Students become hooked on hookah

By Callie LawsonPublished on Friday, April 28, 2006

On recent beautiful spring days, small groups of students huddled around hookah pipes have dotted the Green. The use of hookahs, or water pipes used to smoke tobacco, has recently become more popular at Dartmouth and in the Upper Valley.

West Lebanon business Un-Dun, the only store in the area that sells hookahs, has seen hookah sales double in the past year, according to owner Kiel Gosselin. He said customer base is 18 to 25 year-olds, and Gosselin attributes hookah's popularity increase to the influence of Hollywood icons.

In addition to private impromptu hookah gatherings on the Green and elsewhere, some organizations host more regular events. Jeremy Warburg '08, who organizes Taste of Israel through Hillel, said that the weekly hookah event draws anywhere between five and 50 people. Sigma Nu fraternity has a hookah bar on the top floor of the building, and Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity has hosted hookah fundraisers for Project Bangladesh.

Sayat Ozyilmaz '08 said hookah attracts so many people because of the communal interactions it encourages.

"The social atmosphere [that] hookah provides ... is not available to any other social gathering, you converse about things that you like," Ozyilmaz said. "It's really a time where you empty yourself and not think about anything and that's the ultimate bonding atmosphere for people."

The rising interest in hookah smoking has caused Ozyilmaz to consider opening a hookah bar in Hanover, but he discovered that the owner of a local Indian restaurant is already attempting to get a permit.

Ranging in size from hand-portable to five feet in height, hookahs usually cost between $100 to $200 and burn sheesha, or tobacco saturated in molasses and fruit flavorings. The tobacco smoke is drawn through a bowl of water in the hookah's base and is thus filtered, cooled and drawn into the mouth of the user. Users say they find hookahs more appealing than cigarettes, as the cooled smoke has a smoother and less irritating quality in addition to its flavor.

Hookahs with tobacco are legal to use for anyone over 18 years-old. Although they sometimes carry a stigma of being used for smoking marijuana due to their use in the 1970s for that purpose, the water pipes are designed to be used with sheesha.

After the initial purchase of the hookah pipes themselves, they are relatively inexpensive to keep as a sleeve of coals used to burn the tobacco cost only $2 to $4, and the tobacco itself costs approximately $11 for a 250-gram package.

Hookahs may also be gaining appeal because many hookah enthusiasts believe that smoking hookahs is safer than smoking cigarettes, despite many studies to the contrary. The American Cancer Society's website, Cancer.org, states that the water in hookahs "does not filter out many of the toxins, and hookah smoke contains varying amounts of nicotine, carbon monoxide and other hazardous substances."

Despite hookah's growing popularity on-campus, many of its users assert that it does not compete with other social activities. "[Hookah] is more like something you do if you maybe want to watch a movie," Danny Michlewicz '09 said.