The College Fix

With pot legalized in two states, health researchers are again warning that young people are especially at risk of “performing suboptimally” if they pull out the bong regularly.

In a much less convincing case for puffing piety, USA Today College reports that hookahs – those water pipes you use to smoke flavored tobacco – are the next great health scare for students:

A study published in an American Association for Cancer Research Journal found that young adults smoking hookah have an increased exposure to cancer-causing chemicals.

“Water pipe smoking is generally perceived to be a safe alternative to cigarette smoking, even for children and youths,” says Gideon St.Helen, a University of California, San Francisco postdoctoral fellow for Tobacco Control Research and Education. “Our study shows that water pipe use, particularly chronic use, is not risk-free,” he says in a press release.

And yet the chances that any given student is going through two packs a day of “starbuzz” seem exceedingly remote:

“I go to hookah bars to smoke alone and do homework,” says Adriana Arteaga, senior at George Washington University. …

Mohammad Tarabichi, employee at Cloud Lounge — a hookah bar in Arlington, Va. — says college students from both local universities and overseas come in every day to smoke hookah.

“They come after classes. We have free WiFi, so they come and do their homework, socialize,” Tarabichi says. …

“There have been months where I would smoke at least once a week, but there have also been months where I would smoke maybe twice a month,” Arteaga says.

Between chronic pot use, binge drinking, prescription-pill abuse and the Four Loko panic of a few years ago, hookahs would seem to be pretty low on the list of public-health worries and associated ills. But in the BDSM capital of America, researchers want to freak out college kids who enjoy the occasional puffery that pairs well with programming.

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