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Sheesha is as bad as its ciggie cousin 

Though the State government has not woken up to the hazards of hookah yet and is not ready to ban the increasingly-popular sheesha from public places, doctors and health experts warn that it is a major health risk and may lead to addiction.

With hookah or sheesha smoking becoming a favourite pastime with many young Hyderabadis, pressure has been building up on the State government to ban them from public places. While the reports on the toxicity of hookah samples sent by the city police to AP State Forensic Laboratory are still awaited, several leaders including Congress legislator E. Pratap Reddy want a check on hookah to protect the health of youngsters.

O.N. Murthy, director AP Forensic Laboratory said as many as eight samples are being tested and the report would be ready later this week. “Pubs use flavours in hookahs to attract youngsters.

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Hookah myths, facts  

The summer medical school interns at Gulfcoast South Area Health Education Center presented the following myths and facts about hookah, or water pipe, smoking to college students and community leaders this summer:

MYTH: Hookah is just flavored herbs and doesn't contain tobacco.

FACT: Hookah is tobacco.

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• Flying with shisha smoke 

Smoking shisha has become a popular fashion of urban youths, who think that smoking shisha is fashionable. More shisha shops have opened to meet the demand.

In a closed room, a group of young, stylish boys and girls sat or lay on sofas. A young man breathed shisha smoke from a pipe, then discharged the smoke, closed his eyes and dropped his body on the couch. Other people were also amorous in shisha smoke.

Not far from them, a group of dancers performed a belly dance in sexy clothes.

In the next room, someone had a coughing fit. . . .

To prove that they are stylish, many youngsters go to shisha shops every night. Some consider it as a way to relax, but others turn shisha into a bad habit. Some newspapers reported youngsters mixing shisha with drugs. Many youngsters also stole their parent’s money to smoke shisha.

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Tobacco shops dodge ban 

When Hookah Bliss was forced to close in the spring because of the state indoor smoking ban, the community rallied behind the establishment in hopes of keeping it open.

But the ban is not keeping new tobacco shops from coming to the area.

Smoke Rings, a tobacco shop, opened in Hookah Bliss’ old spot on Franklin Street earlier this month.

Shop employees declined to comment and the store lacks a website. Some say the shop is a chain with other locations in North Carolina.

Expressions, a tobacco shop in the downtown Bank of America building, will be opening a new hookah lounge in the coming weeks as an extension of its existing store.

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Hookahs, patio bars — St. Paul city council is skeptical  

Smoking from hookahs and drinking outside were both given a skeptical eye by the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday, in part because of the crowds they can attract.

The city council introduced an interim ordinance spelling out details of a one-year moratorium on hookah lounges -- tobacco shops that allow customers to "sample" types of tobacco by hanging out and smoking it, indoors, from Middle Eastern hookahs. Hookahs are a type of water pipe.

Separately, council member Dave Thune recommended overruling a neighborhood council and city staff recommendation to allow the Wild Onion bar and restaurant on Grand Avenue to serve alcohol on its outdoor patio.

Hookah lounges, which have operated on the fringes in big cities for decades, have recently trended up in popularity in the Midwest, including Minneapolis and St. Paul, which have had several open in the past year.

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Smoking ban 1, Hookah Bliss 0  

Adam Bliss was drained from defying the statewide smoking ban for four months, facing $6,400 in fines, dwindling revenue and a $3,900 property tax bill when he snuffed the flame on Hookah Bliss at the end of April.

A new store, a head shop dubbed Smoke Rings, replaced it at 418 W. Franklin St., this week.

Bliss, the most outspoken opponent of the ban, was out of work for more than a month. He was saddled with debt from his first, and perhaps last, business, when he got a job working for the family of one of his former Hookah employees.

He now retrieves dead bodies from hospitals and dresses them for funerals. . . .

Fortunately, he won't have to pay the fines, which he accrued at $200 per day from March 22 to April 20, county records show. The Orange County Health Department waived the penalties when Bliss closed. . . .

The department also acknowledged that the law could have been confusing for hookah bar owners.

The smoking ban in restaurants and bars extended to Bliss' business. He had to stop selling alcohol or prohibit people from using hookahs. He chose neither at first, because he was angry that cigar bars and country clubs were granted exemptions while hookah bars were not.

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Hookah Bars Worries About Possible Smoking Ban 

In Savannah there are a pair of hookah bars.

At the Mirage it's lunch and dinner during the day, hookah late nights.

The owners told me they have only been open about 5 months, and when they applied for a business license, no one told them about a possible ban.

Mirage says get rid of the hookah and you made end their business.

They make about 25%t of their money off the 10pm and later smoking. . . .

And while there are nearly 1000 ingredients and chemicals in cigarettes, Middle Eastern's owner, points out the hookah tobacco is much more natural, and not as harmful.

He says most folks just come in to try a hookah once or twice, relax and enjoy. And don't keep smoking afterwards.

As for business, it wouldn't destroy his business, but he says most of Middle Eastern's hookah customers are tourists. The ban it would affect his bottom line, a lot.

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Attorney General Announces Suit Against Two Cigarette Manufacturers and Retailers 

Attorney General Michael A. Delaney announced today that the State of New Hampshire has brought suit in Merrimack County Superior Court against two tobacco retailers to enforce RSA 541-C, the Non-Participating Manufacturers (NPM) Act and RSA 541-D, the Directory Act.

The retailers, East-West Distributors d/b/a Smoke N Discounts of Epsom, New Hampshire, and Tobacco Depot of Seabrook, New Hampshire, have recently installed cigarette-making machines that are capable of making a carton of cigarettes in approximately eight minutes. The retailers are selling all the materials needed to make cigarettes and providing access to the machines to their customers. The State claims that the stores are therefore cigarette manufacturers and must comply with the NPM Act and the Directory Act.

The lawsuits also state that the retailers are selling tobacco intended to be smoked in a pipe for use in the cigarette machines.

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VIDEO: Gaza women defy Hamas shisha ban 

On Sunday, plain-clothes agents patrolled beachside cafés enforcing the edict.

However, some Gazan women are still smoking.

The BBC's Hamada Abu Qamar met Jihad, a veiled woman in her twenties, who was enjoying her shisha at sunset.

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• Hamas: Hookah Smoking Ban Only Targets Women on Beach 

A Hamas Interior Ministry official has clarified a new prohibition on women smoking flavored tobacco through a water pipe. An AOL News story on July 16, citing proprietors in Gaza City, reported that Hamas officials had informed them that shisha smoking by women was banned in restaurants across the Gaza Strip.

The ban is "just on the beach," ministry spokesman Ihab Al-Ghussein said. "All the other places it's not a problem, just the beach is forbidden."

Why the beach?

"We received many complaints from families about their children seeing some women smoking," he said. "It's a social tradition for us. So after we received the complaints, we said they should stop that. If they want that, they should go to some closed places or cafeterias."

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• City cracks down on hookah 'super-bars'  

When Chicago banned smoking in bars and restaurants five years ago, it inadvertently created a loophole exploited by hookah bars that serve flavored tobacco.

They turned into "super-bars" that allow patrons, some of them under-age, to bring in their own liquor and food or have food delivered. Some even offered live music without the required public place of amusement (PPA) license.

On Tuesday, the loophole originally intended for cigar and tobacco shop sampling was closed.

At the behest of North Side Aldermen Pat O'Connor (40th) and Marge Laurino (39th), the City Council's Zoning Committee agreed to require hookah bars to obtain "special use permits" that need authorization from local residents and the Zoning Board of Appeals.

"If the neighborhood had an opportunity to say whether this is a use they wanted, most likely it would be no," O'Connor said.

"There's under-age drinkers that go in. When people leave, it's like taverns used to be: loud, disruptive to the neighborhood....It basically becomes like private clubhouses for kids who couldn't go into a bar and drink legally."

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MOYNIHAN: The Rough Guide to Gaza City 

it would be unfair to compare the fun-destroying Bloombergians with Hamas—I wouldn’t dare—but, seeing the success of smoking bans across the United States and Europe, the coup-mongers in Gaza City have cracked down on the smoking of shisha in public. From The New York Times:

A spokesman for the Hamas police, Ayman al-Batniji, said that the ban applied only to women and that it was in line with “the Palestinian people’s customs and traditions.” But many cafe owners said they had been ordered to ban water pipes for both men and women.

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• Gaza women fume over Hamas' water-pipe ban  

There are few pleasures left for Gaza's 1.5 million people, squeezed by both a blockade and Hamas efforts to impose its strict Muslim lifestyle. And women here just lost another one.

Gaza's Hamas rulers have banned women from smoking water pipes in cafes, sending plainclothes agents through popular beachside spots Sunday to enforce the edict. Some women in the Palestinian territory are grumbling.

"This is silly," said Haya Ahmed, a 29-year-old accountant who said she has smoked water pipes for 10 years. "We are not smoking in the streets but in restaurants, where only a few people can enter."

She predicted the ban would actually make water pipes more tempting for rebellious young women. "Everything forbidden becomes desirable. The decision will lead to more smokers," Ahmed said. . . .

Ghussein, the Interior Ministry spokesman, denied claims they were trying to coerce Gazans into adopting a strictly Islamic lifestyle.

"If we wanted to make Gaza like the Taleban, then we could have done that very easily," Ghussein said.

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Hamas bans women from smoking water pipes in Gaza  

Gaza's Hamas rulers are banning women from smoking water pipes (nargilas) in cafes, claiming it violates tradition and leads to divorce.

The new order went into effect last week, and several cafe owners have been arrested for questioning in recent days under suspicion they have not been enforcing the order.

"It is inappropriate for a woman to sit cross-legged and smoke in public. It harms the image of our people," Ihab Ghussein, Hamas interior ministry spokesman, said in a statement released Sunday.

Police have warned business owners that they face heavy fines if the ban is not enforced.

Police spokesman Ayman Batneiji said Sunday that officers are enforcing Gazan traditions. He said husbands often divorce women seen smoking in public but offered no evidence to support that claim.

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In Latest Ban, Hamas Clamps Down on Hookah Smoking 

for many crowding Gaza's Mediterranean beaches, has long been shisha, flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah, or water pipe, the glowing coals of which illuminate a darkness made more frequent these days by power cuts. But now even the small pleasures of curling aromatic smoke and gurgling water pipes have come to an end.

Hamas today banned smoking shisha in restaurants across the Strip, including along the shoreline. Owners say roaming Hamas officials informed them of the new ruling, which comes into effect today but won't be penalized until Saturday. They say they were not given a reason for the new prohibition, one of a growing number of strictures introduced not by Israel, but by Hamas, the Islamist group that seized control of Gaza in 2007. . . .

Others see the latest measures against tobacco in a better light. "Maybe they are doing this because it's against our religion to harm yourself," says Iman, a young woman wearing a hijab, the Islamic headscarf, sitting on the sand. Her male relatives are gathered next to her, drawing on what may well be their last beach shisha pipe. "You want some?" one of them asks. "Get it while you can."

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