Which is healthier: Hookahs or cigarettes?
- May 2nd, 2010
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in doing my random online browsing at work today, i stumbled across this article and laughed. hi, my name is Fred, and i am a sales Rep for QuantumCig, an electronic cigarette company based primarily in Gwinnett county, Georgia. this study (and a few of the other comments for it) are, for lack of a better term, bullsh*t. sorry, but I’ve been actively involved in the smoking business for quite some time now, and I couldn’t resist throwing out a few facts and numbers after reading this page. first, a little about myself. i have been actively smoking (starting with marijuana) since i was 11 years old, and I’m 20 now. for a total of about 4 1/2 years, i was smoking an average of ab out 2 1/2 packs a day, Camel Turkish and Domestic Blend, either 99’s or Wides. i have smoked hookah since i was 17, and for about 1 1/2 years it was almost every night, upwards of 3-4 hours a night, as i lived very close to the Ohio State University campus, which has hookah at pretty much every 4th corner. Now here are the facts: first off, NO smoking is good for you. whether it be cigarettes, cigars, hookah, marijuana, crack, or even (yes, I’m saying it) electronic cigarettes. The simple fact is you are putting a foreign substance into your body that, by definition, doesn’t belong there. Your body isn’t built to smoke anything, period. However, some substances are obviously infinitely healthier to smoke than others. While yes, hookah tobacco does give the user considerably more smoke than a typical tobacco cigarette, it is still far healthier than a cigarette. a recent study was conducted by a team of professors, chairmen of major tobacco control organizations, and chemists, to defend electronic cigarette companies from the persecution by the FDA. the study showed amounts of certain carcinogenic chemicals in select tobacco and tobacco alternative products. the study revealed that while E cigs which had 8.183 amount of the chemicals (roughly the same as the nicotine patch, which is known not to cause cancer), Winston cigarettes had an average of 3365 amount of the same compound. this, however, was on the low end, compared to Newport with 3885, Malboro with 6600, and Camel, with an insane 7450. Unfortunately, hookah was not examined in their surveys, however it is a known fact that hookah, consisting of tobacco, has a good amount of carcinogenic chemicals naturally in it. this survey also, however, doesn’t take into consideration the 4000+ chemicals that are additionally added to most brands of cigarettes. Cigarette companies dont add these chemicals, such as rat poison, cyanide, and arsenic, for no reason. they do 2 main things: make you more addicted to cigarettes in general by making your body more dependent on the nicotine naturally found in tobacco. And because each individual cigarette brand has a different blend of chemicals, they make you more addicted to that specific brand. Lets take a look at the smoking trends 50 years ago: cigarette advertisements were virtually everywhere, and smoking was widely accepted in most places. yet despite the extreme decline in the amount of smokers from then to now,the mortality rate directly related smoking has risen for both males and females more than 10%! what does that mean? Cigarettes are getting worse. much worse. So in reality, while smoking hookah is by no stretch of the imagination GOOD for you, it is nowhere near as bad as smoking cigarettes. for more proof of this, just visit India, where hookah has been part of the culture since the Mughal Empire, from the early 1500’s. Also, and this is my last little point, consider who would be most against the use of hookah in particular. Most anti-smokers are against smoking period, even electronic cigarettes. they don’t care what’s BETTER for you, because they know its ALL BAD for you. just a thought here, but the anti-hookah argument seems awfully familiar to the anti electronic cigarette argument… *GASP!* could it possibly be the SAME people who are spreading this crap? The FDA, widely known as one of the most corrupt government agencies in the world, are known to be backed by two major capital sources: Phillip Morris (also known as Malboro), and Pharmaceutical companies. So it stands reason that the more people use alternative products (such as electronic cigs or hookahs), the less people buy one of the worst cigarettes on the market, which ultimately lessens the number of people who purchase the horribly overpriced cancer medication from (you guessed it) the pharmaceutical companies. maybe it’s just me, but I’m beginning to sense a pattern here… let me know what you think people.
-Fred, Quantumcig @ Mall of Georgia
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