Hooked on hookah
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
Smoking tobacco through a hose attached to a bowl of water is becoming more popular on campuses these days. Researchers say their Internet-based survey of students at eight North Carolina colleges and universities found about 40 percent reported they had used a hookah, also known as a water pipe.
Hookah smoke is flavored and cooler than cigarettes, but researcher Erin Sutfin of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center says it's just as bad for health. She says a lot of the users didn't seem to realize this:
``Current hookah users were more likely to report beliefs that it is safer than smoking cigarettes. It is not a safe behavior, and they need to understand that.'' (7 seconds)
The study in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.