The smell of fruit pervades the air as people sit around picnic tables letting smoke escape their mouths. They sit on couches and blow smoke rings. But they aren’t smoking cigarettes or illegal substances. They’re smoking shisha — tobacco from a hookah.
For many, smoking hookah is a social event.
“It kind of forces you to sit around with people who maybe you wouldn’t normally sit around with,” Kegan Bourne, a sophomore in communication and hookah smoker, said. “It’s a nice ice breaker.”
Bourne got his first hookah when he was 15 and said he has made a lot of his friends through hookah smoking.
Throughout his freshman year, Bourne would sit outside their dorms smoking hookah, rain or shine.
“People would just come and sit and want to smoke,” Bourne said. “I met a lot of people like that.”
The cultural aspect drew Bourne to the hookah, he said. The hookah originated in India and Persia in the late 16th century and has gained popularity worldwide.
Hookahs work by placing lit coals atop a bowl typically filled with shisha. A piece of aluminum foil with holes poked in it keeps the coals from directly burning the shisha. The coals burn the shisha, causing smoke to fall to the water-filled base. The smoker inhales the smoke through a hose attached to the base.
Becca Titus, a sophomore and barista at Nara Lounge, said hookah is an important social facilitator for people from other countries, and that importance is spreading to the United States.
Cigarettes do not share this quality with hookah, Bourne said, adding that cigarettes are “American” and have a different stigma.
Titus said she smokes both hookah and cigarettes, but has started smoking fewer cigarettes since working and smoking at the hookah lounge.
Some people, according to Titus, think it’s better to smoke hookah than it is to smoke cigarettes. However, Titus said she thinks hookah can be worse for a person than cigarettes because of the molasses in the syrup.
“For some reason, people think it’s better smoking hookah once a week than smoking a pack a week,” Titus said.
Titus said people view hookah and cigarettes in different ways, but could not name a reason why.
“I think it’s the social aspect that really separates them,” Bourne said. “You can go out and smoke hookah and it’s a thing people meet up to do, but no one meets up to smoke cigarettes.”
Nonsmokers also view hookah and cigarettes differently.
“I don’t mind hanging around people while they smoke hookah,” Sarah Lasater, a sophomore in landscape architecture, said. “I can go to hookah bars and not feel super out of place. I can’t go and hang out with people who are just smoking cigarettes, like I wouldn’t just join someone on a smoke break.”
Lasater said the secondhand smoke is also different.
“Hookah is mostly tobacco and you smoke through water, but cigarettes have a bunch of gross stuff and aren’t filtered very well,” Lasater said. “You don’t want that.”
