College students flocking to flavored tobacco cafés

Lora Simmons
State Hornet
November 09, 2005

It’s 8 p.m. Sunday and on the other side of the Guy West Bridge from Sacramento State, groups of college students are heading into the Cobblestone Café to purchase their favorite blends, hang out with friends and get in their last fix of the weekend.

But this café is no Starbucks and the blends have nothing to do with beans or caffeine. It’s hookah – the latest trend among tobacco connoisseurs, and one that’s gaining in popularity.

Azen Kazemi, a communications major at American River College, sat with friends at a table outside the café as Andy Raoufi, 19, blew apple scented smoke rings into the air.

The hookah is a water pipe used to smoke flavored tobacco, usually mixed with fruit, honey and molasses. The blends are often referred to as narghile, hubble-bubble or more frequently, shisha. The pipe itself is a large glass contraption about two feet tall, with varying numbers of hoses connected in the middle.

Originating in Turkey during the 16th century, the fad is nothing new to Kazemi. “I’m Persian, so this is something that my parents do,” the 18-year-old said. “It’s more of a cultural thing for us.” Smoking hookah is illegal for minors, but Kazemi has done so for years, a common ritual in Middle Eastern homes.

“Right now we’re smoking double apple, its my favorite blend,” said Raoufi, a graphic design major at Sierra College. “It has a really sweet flavor.”

Café owner Jamal Shehadeh said his place is popular with Sac State students. Shehadeh had to acquire a tobacco license from the City of Sacramento and from the state, but said it was well worth it.

“When I first took over the café it was a sandwich and coffee house,” Shehadeh said. “Now we offer a larger menu but our business is all hookah.”

There are more than 300 hookah bars across the United States, 50 of them in California, according to an August newsletter from the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP).

Shisha tobacco is a moist mixture and when smoked out of the hookah isn’t burned but marinated inside the pipe and vaporized into smoke. A large box of strawberry blend at Cobblestone runs about $10 and the flavor lasts about 45 minutes for three people, Shehadeh said. The pipes range in price from $30 to $165.

“There are more than 25 blends that we sell here and most of the young people like to try them all,” said Shehadeh, a non-smoker. But the lack of cigarette smoke odor and the smell of peaches and pears in the air isn’t all there is to hookah.

“Tobacco, no matter what form, is still addictive and could possibly lead to cigarette use,” said Leslie Snoke, program director of STAND, an anti-nicotine dependence project of the Sacramento American Lung Association. “Smoking hookah once a week with friends may not be enough and you may feel the need to start smoking all the time.”

Young people are under the impression that smoking hookah is fine since cigarettes aren’t involved, she said. “Smoking hookah for 15 minutes is the equivalent of five cigarettes.”

At the Briar Patch smoke shop in the Arden Mall, it’s the younger crowd that comes in looking for hookah products.

“We get mostly college-age people in and most of them smoke it for the social side of it,” said Briar Patch employee Ed Trevino, who smokes hookah at home with friends.

In California, 18 to 24 year olds are smoking at increasing rates and are now recognized as the fastest growing age group that uses tobacco, according to the American Cancer Society’s 2004 annual report.

But Snoke said that research specific to hookah is just beginning. “We are trying to increase awareness because it is growing in popularity among high school and college age people.”

Snoke is also researching the legal side of it. If hookah is smoked inside an establishment in California that business is breaking the smoke free work place law, she said. “People think that hookah is harm free because it’s not an actual cigarette but we still need to protect workers in those places.”

But whether it’s inside or out, with friends or family, Kazemi will continue to smoke hookah. “I’ve smoked it with my parents for a while now,” she said. “And I’m seeing more of my friends doing it, too. I come to the café about twice a month and it’s really about the socializing.”

Lora Simmons can be reached at news@statehornet.com