The recent open­ing of Cleopatra’s Lounge on Northland Drive is spread­ing a craze on cam­pus: smok­ing hookah.

The hookah is a grow­ing fad on cam­puses across the nation. Many stu­dents are eager to try the hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent fla­vors of hookah available.

This social pas­time goes back hun­dreds of years. According to Dr. Robert Friar, FSU biol­ogy pro­fes­sor, about 400 years ago, physi­cians in India noticed that peo­ple who smoked tobacco were hav­ing more health prob­lems and the physi­cians invented the hookah pipe, or water pipe, hop­ing it would reduce the harm­ful effects of smok­ing by fil­ter­ing the smoke through water. From India, the hookah pipe spread to Middle Eastern coun­tries and to other parts of the world.

Mola Xiong, server at Cleopatra’s Lounge since its open­ing in March, said the hookah’s pop­u­lar­ity and busi­ness have been grow­ing steadily.

“We’ve def­i­nitely seen an increase in hookah usage and we’re see­ing new cus­tomer faces all the time,” said Xiong.

Cleopatra’s Lounge sets up the hookah for the cus­tomer and offers over 40 dif­fer­ent exotic flavors.

“Our three most pop­u­lar fla­vors are prob­a­bly orange, fuzzy navel, and two apples,” said Xiong. “For first-timers, I would rec­om­mend orange; you can mix and match any two fla­vors, as well.”

Joel VanNorman, sopho­more at FSU, believes smok­ing hookah is a fun pastime.

“An Arabic friend of mine from my home­town made me inter­ested in it,” said VanNorman. “I love smok­ing hookah because, for one thing, it’s just fun, sec­ondly it’s another rea­son to hang with your friends, and thirdly it’s intrigu­ing. My favorite fla­vor is watermelon.”

However, smok­ing hookah poses health concerns.

“To this day, many peo­ple believe that it is safer to use the hookah pipe than to use cig­a­rettes as the ‘drug deliv­ery’ sys­tem for nico­tine from tobacco,” said Dr. Friar. “Such is not the case.”

Friar explained that recent stud­ies by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) indi­cate that there is actu­ally greater harm from smok­ing using a hookah pipe than from using cigarettes.

“The rea­son is that the water does not fil­ter out the toxic ingre­di­ents in tobacco smoke, as some peo­ple believe,” said Friar. “People who use the hookah pipe almost always inhale more tobacco smoke – they smoke longer and burn up more tobacco and thus get more nico­tine, tar, and other dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals and car­cino­gens than peo­ple who use cigarettes.”

Regardless of neg­a­tive effects, smok­ing hookah is becom­ing an increas­ingly pop­u­lar social pas­time on cam­puses all across the nation. n