PIPE DREAMS

Dim lights and loud music set the mood for dozens of high school students as they walk into one of several hookah lounges across the Las Vegas Valley.

Hookah, a traditional Middle Eastern social activity, recently has become a popular weekend activity among American teenagers.

A hookah is a single or multistemmed -- often glass-based -- water pipe for smoking tobacco fruits. The hookah operates by water filtration and indirect heat by a preheated coal. The concept of hookah is that smoke is filtered through a pipe, which originated in India and later developed into the modern hookah in Iran.

Growing up in Las Vegas, it is common to hear how there is nothing to do on the weekends, so when this trend became popular, and teenagers began to find out which lounges do not card, groups of friends began meeting up and smoking.

"Smoking hookah is something to do with my friends when we get bored," says Mike Mathis, a senior at Faith Lutheran. "We do not smoke cigarettes because that is a solitary thing, whereas hookah is something to do in a group."

Throughout their school years, students have been taught that smoking cigarettes is bad for a person's health and they should never do it, which might explain why fewer teens seem to be turning to cigarettes.

There seems to be a perception that hookah is not necessarily addictive in the way that cigarettes are, but medical professionals say the effect that it has on a person's health is really no different.

Dr. George Tu, a local pulmonologist, says that there is little difference between smoking hookah and smoking tobacco.

"While the tobacco in a hookah is heated rather than burned, it still produces smoke," Tu says. "In addition, hookah utilizes charcoal, which can generate more carbon monoxide. The water in a hookah only filters out less than 5 percent of nicotine."

Many students are under the impression that smoking hookah is OK because they do not smoke it very often.

But Tu says that impression is false.

According to Tu, it is difficult to estimate the equivalent quantity of cigarettes to a session of hookah smoke, but in general, a person who smokes hookah daily absorbs as much nicotine as someone who smokes 10 cigarettes a day.

Even students who may be aware that smoking hookah has the potential to harm a person's health through illnesses such as lung cancer, heart disease and blood vessel disease, are unwilling to give up the leisure activity because of the social aspect.

"Unfortunately, nicotine is highly addictive," Tu says. "It is extremely difficult for a person to quit tobacco use. On average, it takes a person at least seven attempts to successfully quit tobacco use. Given that hookah smoke is utilized in a social (environment), it will be more difficult for a person to quit due to peer pressure."

According to Chloe Lohmeyer, a junior at The Meadows School, there may be a very simple answer to why students continue to smoke hookah.

"Hookah seems to be less harmful than cigarettes because from the time we are little, we are told that smoking cigarettes are harmful and will kill you, but we are never told that smoking hookah will kill you," Lohmeyer says. "Maybe if this was communicated to students at younger ages, then there would be a decrease in smoking hookah."