BY: NG XIAO YAN
"It's like a sweet sort of poison," says Teo Jun Lin, inhaling deeply into the shisha hose. In the dim, smoke-filled room of Aladdin Cafe, teenagers in groups of four or five sit around ornate waterpipes, playing cards or just chatting.
"I know smoking shisha is really harmful to my lungs, but I'm not doing it regularly. I don't get addicted to it either." A social smoker, Jun Lin, 19, goes to popular youth hangout Haji Lane with her close friends to catch up with one another over shisha and drinks.
By day, boutiques line Haji Lane selling novelty items, artsy craftwork, bikes and vintage and trendy apparels in restored pre-war shophouses. Come evening, the small street lights up in a multilude of colours, and restaurant-cum-shisha joints like Aladdin set up waterpipes outside. Throngs of youths and young adults lie idly around the waterpipes in carpets and soft cushions, blowing tobacco smoke into the air, having small talk or laughing loudly.
Says the third year student from Ngee Ann Polytechnic: "We only smoke once in a while. To me, shisha is something that you do when you're talking with your friends all night -- you wouldn't want to be there just sitting and chatting, you'd want to do something else along with it."
A social activity that is popular in Arab countries, a shisha is a waterpipe inside which tobacco is partially burned using coal. The smoke then passed through water held in the waterpipe and inhaled through the hose. The tobacco also comes in many flavours, cherry, grape, cappucino, apple and mixed fruits, leaving a sweet taste in the mouth.
"That's why I prefer them over cigarettes," explains Jun Lin. "They don't taste or smell as rancid because they are mixed with a flavour of your choice. My favourite's cherry, because it's so sweet!"
However, the danger lies within youths' misconceptions of shisha smoking. Many youngsters treat shisha as a harmless recreational activity, finding the relaxing atmosphere of shisha lounges attractive to spend quality time with their friends. Some are also mistaken that the water in the shisha pipe absorbs harmful substances in the smoke.
According to Singapore's Health Promotion Board, findings have revealed that shisha smokers inhale 100 to 200 times the amount of smoke produced by a single cigarette in a one-hour shisha session.
As they take deeper puffs from the waterpipe, they inhale more harmful substances than a cigarette smoker. This is due to the burning of tobacco in a shisha using charcoal, which produces higher levels of carbon monoxide, nicotine and cancer-causing chemicals than conventional cigarettes. Increased levels of carbon monoxide will cause brain damage and unconsciousness.
Bertrand Tan, 19, had thought shisha was a safer alternative than cigarettes. "Until someone told me shisha was even more hazardous," says the third year Singapore Polytechnic student. "There are always ads on television, posters and talks warning how dangerous cigarette smoking is."
"People tell you that you can die from cigarettes, but not shisha."
As shisha is considered smoking, strict measures are imposed to bar youngsters under the age of 18 from smoking at shisha joints. Aladdin adopts these practices and checks the IDs of teens before allowing them to smoke the waterpipes.
"Sometimes there are little children who accompany their older siblings to our joint," says Archit, a 19-year-old waiter who works part-time at Aladdin's. "But as long as we don't catch them smoking, they are free to enter."
Bertrand has stopped his shisha sessions with his friends ever since he found out about the hazardous health risks, but feels that there should more campaigns in schools to educate youths about smoking.
"Up till now I hadn't really seen a campaign warning about the danger that it can do to your body. Many of my friends think that shisha is harmless compared to a cigarette."
"And I know there's many youths out there who are curious about shisha, so I hope to see more awareness programmes to stop them before they try it out."
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