The internet was buzzing with mixed reactions recently after a video that captured some secondary school girls in their uniforms smoking Shisha while rocking to a music in a room.
The school girls who were later identified as students of Oreyo Senior Grammar School, Igbogbo, Ikorodu area of the state, have been identified and subsequently suspended for their behaviours.
The video evoked several mixed reactions from Nigerians who chanced upon the video. Some people claimed that a guy may have lured them to his house while others took to the comment section to discuss the dangers of smoking shisha.
For the want to know, Shisha is a single or multi-stemmed instrument for vaporizing and smoking either tobacco, cannabis, hashish and others. The smoke is passed through a water basin, often glass-based before inhalation.
- Contrary to popular belief, smoking shisha is not safer than smoking cigarettes. And studies show that one hour of smoking shisha can be as damaging to health as smoking 100 cigarettes.
- Users often perceive it to be less harmful than smoking cigarettes, but studies show that the smoke contains many of the same toxic components found in cigarette smoke, such as nicotine, tar and heavy metals.
- So like cigarettes, it contains nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, such as arsenic and lead. As a result, shisha smokers can be at risk of the same kinds of diseases as cigarette smokers, such as heart and circulatory diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases and problems during pregnancy.
- In the short term, Shisha smoking raises blood pressure and heart rate, which may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. In the long term, hookah smoking can contribute to a variety of cancers, heart disease, and lung disease.
- Shisha smokers are at risk for many of the same illnesses as cigarette smokers, such as oral cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, and esophageal cancer.
- Shisha use is also associated with decreased lung function and heart disease, and it can have a negative effect on fertility.
- Secondhand smoke from a hookah is also hazardous. If you’re in the room with a lit hookah water pipe, you’re breathing in cancer-causing toxins just as with secondhand cigarette smoke.
- Shisha smoking can also spread illness. Because it is usually smoked in a social setting, with several people sharing the same pipe and sometimes the same mouthpiece, colds and other infections, including oral herpes, can be easily passed along.
- The risks of addiction can’t be downplayed. Hookah smokers typically smoke longer and more often, take more puffs and inhale more deeply than cigarette smokers. They absorb more nicotine in higher concentrations because of the way the smoke is cooled.
- Moreover, it’s been shown that heavy hookah smoking has been associated with ischemic heart disease, heart failure and coronary artery disease development.