The College Fix

I’ve never smoked a conventional cigarette in my life. But a few times a year I’ll indulge in a cigar, hookah or (this past weekend) clove cigarette, because someone brought them to a party and it’s a special treat.

According to public-health researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, I’m just as reckless as if I were chain-smoking Camels. Public-health zealotry, if you haven’t learned by now, is one of the few acceptable expressions of religion left in America.

And as I’ve written before, no one is a bigger target of this government-backed proselytizing than young people, because they are least able to distinguish between chronic habits and occasional indulgences.

The Pitt News reports on a new study of hookah use that might have the most ridiculous line I’ve ever seen in a purported science-news story:

According to the study, which Pitt’s School of Medicine published online Monday, a single hookah session delivers nearly 125 times more smoke, 25 times more tar, 10 times more carbon monoxide and 2 and a half times the nicotine than a single cigarette.

You’re kidding! “A single hookah session” – which is left undefined, but I’d guess for the average user is an hour a week, with several friends sharing a pipe – delivers more crap than a single cigarette, which you can smoke in two minutes in the cold before going to your next class? What a great frickin’ apples-to-apples comparison!

I can’t tell whether the Pitt News reporter is just a dolt (science journalism is generally awful, as proven by this hoax) or the study is really that poorly written (it’s subscription-only).

That’s because the same researchers did a survey of hookah use last year that appears on its face to be just as misleading. As The Pitt News reported then, the study by Brian Primack, vice chancellor for research on health and society, found that

one in five high school seniors have smoked tobacco out of a hookah in the last year. According to the study … nearly one in three high school seniors smoked hookah frequently enough to consider themselves regular users. …

The study focused on 8,737 high school seniors who researchers surveyed between 2010 and 2013. Primack’s findings revealed frequent users had smoked hookah at least six times in a year.

Six times?! Why isn’t there a Mothers Against Hookah Smoking? This is a public-health epidemic when “frequent users” inhale from a pipe bimonthly! (“Frequent users” work out to about seven in 100 students, if I’m doing the math correctly.)

There’s no indication in the study, either, whether students are using a hookah by themselves or doing it socially with friends and presumably smoking less each because, umm, these are jobless dependents, not wealthy vice chancellors whose vices probably match their incomes.

Whether it’s shoddy journalism or savvy taxpayer-funded marketers, what’s clear is that public-health authorities and their high priests in the academy are incessantly nagging students to avoid occasional pleasures that won’t affect their long-term health.

Leave your critical thinking at the door

I don’t doubt that chronic smoking can kill you. My grandfather died of lung cancer before I was born, which made my mother an anti-smoking zealot.

But students who are heading off on their own in college need to be able to learn how to moderate their pleasures and judge among risks.

When propagandists tell them that everything they put up to their lips is equally bad – regardless of how often they use it and in what quantity – it doesn’t make them stop using everything. It makes them worse at what they do use.

This is abundantly clear when it comes to alcohol abuse in college. Students who can fight in wars are not legally allowed to drink, so they learn terrible drinking habits – shotgun it so you can get drunk faster (and lower your inhibitions) in case the house gets raided.

They don’t learn to appreciate the qualities of what they imbibe, and to drink less so they can actually enjoy it and remember it.

If researchers like Primack want to help students, rather than just score grants on politically popular subjects, they would tell students to moderate their consumption of any drug – even caffeine.

FYI – clove cigarettes have been banned for sale in the U.S. for several years because of this hypocritical protectionist law, so find a friend who travels abroad regularly or knows someone who does if you want the occasional special treat like me.

RELATED: Latest Liberal Freakout: Students Smoking Flavored Tobacco Occasionally

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