Dr Achile Manirakiza The long queues for the first real weekend of the New Year to particular bar spots around the city are always amazing. Many go purposely for drinking, some others join the show to catch up socially. There is another stratum of a much younger generation that join the crowd to smoke. The good thing, they believe, is that it is not the deadly and so much hated cigarette that has the long term effects and that smell bad, anyway. That generation is rising, and they are all over the cities of the country, and have joined another generation across the cities of the region and in the world, to actually find an old movement, initiated centuries ago, in interesting instances. It is believed that shisha was initiated by a physician, but popular beliefs attribute the invention of the long straight necked tube with boiling water - requiring a burning charcoal on its top; all of that, six centuries ago. And history was made, in the Muslim countries that traditionally do not smoke but where social smokers are allowed, much as we allowed social drinking that often deviates into a heavy one. It has spread to our countries, and not so recent would we see the proudly standing fragile-trendy glasses and the long tubes in bars making the joy of the owner seeing floods of customers passing by to get a puff before proceeding home. That is before owning one at home. The medical whereabouts of inhaling the flavoured smokes are much as smoking cigarettes, on a long term. There is nicotine or other naughty particles into it but so much more, and enough to put one’s lungs at risk; let’s go through it. On a closer look, although the smoking is made with a personal material object, risk of infection spread is as high, from an individual to another. The water that gets troubled while taking a puff does not filter all the chemicals contained in the ‘flavour’ and at the end again, the materials are the very same as the ones in the tobacco smelly smokes. The article will spare you the mouthfuls, but be aware that the naughtiest elements, nitrosamines and heavy metals are included in that holy Arabic smoke. Lest we forget, the nicotine is the same between one shisha session and a regular cigarette smoking; more carbon monoxide – a deadly gas when kept in lungs- higher than a regular branded cigarette smoking. Spared to you is the imagination that the same sessions put you one a long term risk of lung and gastric cancers. Same as the bar attendants, either tasting it before you smoke, or even exposed to the puffs are at risk. Although the lungs might look better compared to a heavy smoker, that is not an ultimate testing tool. Trust if a toxic tube put on a mouth after smoking shisha would blow. Repeat, the effects are the same on the long run. The shisha phenomenon is now widely serious as often without accepting it, the generations crave for it, much as any other drug person would die to get a puff around,dependently. And as often as it may sound, the exposure being as high, dependence and tolerance go hand in hand and the irreparable – addiction – happens. Do not trust the flavour, the crowds and the whole setting making look the tubes safer and ready to be smoked to all be that much true. At the end, shisha is the flavoured, taller and sophisticated cousin to cigarettes, but the effects are comparable and the first might be naughtier. Exposing always lead to better decisions.
