Posted on 12/12/2005 10:34:24 AM PST by kingattax
A smoking new trend from the Middle-East is filtering its way into eastern Iowa. University of Iowa student Robin Loewe is tired of doing the same old things.
Loewe says, "There's not that much to do besides going to the bar or sit in your room and watch a movie or something."
That is why she decided to try out one of the newest trends among 18 to 24 year-olds, smoking hookah. Also known as a water pipe or hubble-bubble, a hookah is a device used for smoking tobacco through a water filter.
Robin Hickenbottom, the manager of the Red Poppy, a hookah bar in Iowa City says, "It is all natural and there are no additives and everything, so if health concerns are something people are thinking about."
Supporters of the hookah say it's a great alternative to cigarettes, while others say they are just blowing smoke.
Beth Ritter Ruback is the project manager of Cafe Johnson County, an anti-tobacco organization.
Ritter Ruback says, "No exposure to a tobacco product is without a health impact and so thinking that any tobacco use is safer is just a fallacy. Nicotine is still inhaled a hookah pipe. The addictive affect is going to be the same whether its with a hookah pipe or with a cigarette of cigar."
Hickenbottom says, "I know a couple of people who have stopped smoking cigarettes because of the hookah and not because they are getting there fix somewhere else just because its that oral fixation."
The tobacco called "shisha" is soaked in molasses and is available in fruit, floral and mint flavors. The legal age for purchasing hookah is 18.
HOpe the dog had sense to lap it out of the tube instead of the straight shot that most funneling idiots take.
I've seen some SICK folks following a night of funneling. NO GOOD can come from that!
This has to be the most error-riddled article I've seen all month.
And I'm just talking about the grammar and spelling.
Remind me again why taxpayers are being forced to subsidize the "education" of these "students"?
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