It’s Saturday night at a local pub in the central business district of Harare.
Jazz music is on repeat and young imbibers are sipping lager beers while in a corner sits a tall gentleman with a menthol-curved cigarette.
He gently clips the white filter embroidered with a green font between his lips, in a long stroke and puffs a misty fume.
As he smiles, he reveals his nicotine-tinted golden cavity drawing for a gallop of lager.
Juxtaposed to the immediate right are a couple of young ladies with hookahpipe tips stuffed in their mouths, puffing thick foggy mist at regular intervals.
The water-tight sealed shisha bottle makes an annoying bubbling sound as the trio inhales in turns the stuffed flavours, a concentrate of tobacco chops and vegetable oils.
The general assumption by the ignorant trio is that hookah is safer than cigarettes.
But the sad reality is — both are harmful and hazardous to health.
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“The water base filters all harmful substances and toxins,” said one of the ladies.
Streetwise chaps have long misled people to push volumes of their hookah lucrative business on the pretext that shisha has a lower nicotine content than the popular cigarettes from the flue-cured Virginia golden leaf.
Allan Kandaona, a hookah vendor said shisha is nicotine-free and less harmful than other smoking models.
“Shisha smoking is less harmful,” he said.
According to the World Health Organisation journal on the effects of shisha smoking, the sessions — which usually last 20-80 minutes — cause the inhalation of the same amount of smoke as a cigarette smoker consuming over 100 cigarettes.
“Hookah smoke has high levels of harmful chemicals,” reads part of the journal.
“These include tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals called carcinogens.
“In fact, hookah smokers are exposed to more carbon monoxide and smoke than are cigarette smokers.”
In Zimbabwe, shisha is considered the new smart way of smoking and it often associated with class or status in society.
It has found its way among the youths who shy away from cigarette smoking.
But studies suggest that it could be more dangerous than cigarette smoking.
Health experts argue that shisha smoking is as dangerous to health as common tobacco cigarettes since the two have the same chemical composition that includes nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals such as arsenic and lead.
“The chemical composition of shisha and cigarettes can make walls of the smoker arteries sticky causing excess accumulation of fat,” said a government health expert who preferred anonymity.
“This then clogs and may lead to potential heart attacks or strokes.”
Recently government launched shisha farming in Zimbabwe due to the growth in demand of the same especially in the Asian market and Europe.
The general assumption by the community is that smoking shisha through a water filter is safer than smoking cigarettes.
Unfortunately, shisha sessions are longer than cigarette sessions such that hookar smokers inhale more fumes, said a health expert.
Like cigarette smoking, these toxins from tobacco-based shisha put smokers at risk of cancers and other respiratory infections.
Another health expert Yvonne Mharadze said nicotine was addictive.
“Nicotine is a chemical that makes your brain produce feelings of pleasure, but the effects don’t last very long,” she said.
“When the pleasing effects wear off, you feel the need to smoke to trigger the feelings of pleasure again.
“The more you smoke, the more nicotine you need to feel good, which is how a nicotine addiction can happen.”
Also, passive smoking of either cigarettes or hookah is dangerous as the mist and fumes contain carbon monoxide.
“Prolonged exposure and habitual smoking can lead to fatty accumulation in ones veins and this may result in cardio arrests, which leads to heart attacks,” Mharadze said.
Another health expert Tapuwa Magure said using an unclean pipe or sharing a pipe with other smokers was risky.
“It could raise your chance of getting a disease such as, the flu, tuberculosis, herpes, hepatitis and Covid-19,” he said.
Stereotypical assumptions that are strongly held in society have left many chain hookah smokers in grays regarding misconception on the reality of smoking.
Though legal, shisha smoking is fast becoming a global concern as it has gained popularity in Africa, Zimbabwe included.
It can be traced back to South Eastern Asia, North Africa as well as the Middle East.
In developed countries, shisha smokers are migrating to the newer electronic hookahs, called e-hookahs or vaping devices.
These use a battery to heat a liquid into a vapor, which users breathe in.
The liquid can come with or without nicotine and flavors.
But health expert Emma Karey, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of environmental medicine at NYU Langone Health in New York City found that those who use the vaper are at higher risk than those who smoke cigarettes.
“People who smoke hookahs may be at a higher risk of inflammation and cancers of the nose, sinuses and throat because of the way they exhale when using these devices,” said Karey.
“This is because the way vapers and hookah smokers use their devices may expose the nose and sinuses to far more emissions than cigarettes, which may in turn increase their risk of upper respiratory diseases.”
Sendisa Sandura Ndlovu a peer educator coordinator at Say-What said there is need for strong peer education among youths to abstain from substance abuse.
“The emerging problem among young people is ignorance of the consequences associated with hooker smoking at large, as civic society players we are looking into drug and substance abuse campaigns aimed at educating young people the truth about smoking,” Ndlovu said. —sourcesmedia.com
