Research Study: Results

[Teissenb]

Greetings HookahForum.com users:

Some of you may remember a survey conducted here in May-July 2006, with permission from the moderator. My colleagues and I used those results in a paper which has now been published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research. The journal holds the copyright to the paper itself, so I cannot provide you with a PDF in this forum. I can, however, provide you with a link to the MEDLINE abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1823630...Pubmed_RVDocSum

The PubMed ID is 18236304

Many universities have electronic access to Nicotine and Tobacco Research, so that may be a good resource if you are interested in seeing the entire paper.

Thanks to all,

Tom Eissenberg

[shoresidejake]

i don't understand

[Seanij]

Too many big words in it for my brain to comprehend..

[spoolinspoon]

..........too many big words???where the hell did you guys/girls goto school at? I might not be the smartest one but I understood the survey results.

[shoresidejake]

lol i was being sarcastic... just doesn't look interesting enough to waste my time on...

[zeppyrkr]

i could have guessed most of that, lol and yes did you guys go to school? i don't consider myself anywhere near being smart but that was pretty black and white ...

[camelflage]

the last line bothers me..

[erufiku]

I guess for most forum users the results are not a surprise. What did raise my eyebrow was the >1/3 NHT use in the past month. Unfortunately the survey did not address the issue of tradition vs. popularity which would be very interesting to see, given that at least some of the people that post here are of a Middle-Eastern background.

Basically this survey focused on mo'assel smokers rather than on the mo'assel itself. I would like to see more objective data provided on the effects of waterpipe smoking for mo'assel before calling for preventive measures.

ps: also, for future research, you might consider putting in a question about how long the person has been smoking mo'assel for. Edited February 5, 2008 by erufiku

[hinrg]

the last line bothers me..

"These results are from small convenience samples; more detailed study of a larger group of randomly sampled U.S. waterpipe tobacco smokers will be valuable in understanding this behavior and developing effective strategies to prevent it."

I agree. I'm not quite sure why people (non-smokers or not) feel the need to control the general population's intake of products they deem "harmful". I don't understand why people always feel as though every smoker is trying to quit. I love smoking and have no intention of quitting anytime soon.

Note: This is not intended to be an attack on the poster's article, I actually thought it was pretty interesting. This is just my opinion.

[zeppyrkr]

the last line bothers me..

"These results are from small convenience samples; more detailed study of a larger group of randomly sampled U.S. waterpipe tobacco smokers will be valuable in understanding this behavior and developing effective strategies to prevent it."

I agree. I'm not quite sure why people (non-smokers or not) feel the need to control the general population's intake of products they deem "harmful". I don't understand why people always feel as though every smoker is trying to quit. I love smoking and have no intention of quitting anytime soon.

Note: This is not intended to be an attack on the poster's article, I actually thought it was pretty interesting. This is just my opinion.

i guess to many hookah smokers are chasing them down and blowing it in there faces lmao, god hookah smokers have to learn to be less extreme and just smoke in there houses ...

[MechAnt]

These results are not completely statistically sound. The sample is a convenience sample of an online forum where we reflect an extremely small percentage of hookah smokers. We tend to be the more hardcore smokers, this fact taking away from the credibility of this report. To make it a statistically sound report, they must take a random sample of ALL hookah smokers and from there can we make any assumptions about the regular use of hookah. I would make some more important and valid points but I just finished a midterm and I'm tired as hell. This report is biased, incomplete, and some of the things are irrelevant. Asking us about NHT use? That's completely irrelevant to hookah!

Sounds like a typical gov't report that fails being a sound survery on several fronts. Don't let this bother you. Found it an interesting read though

(REMINDER! Everything I said is my opinion... and regurgitated from some of my statistics classes...) Edited February 5, 2008 by MechAnt

[zeppyrkr]

maybe someone could put a better survey to have all us forum members to take, and if you don't believe those stats your living in a box, yes the NHT was off topic but its interesting to see the comparison ...

[r1v3th3ad]

That was interesting, just needed to have a crapload more detail to it.

[mathuv]

the last line bothers me..

"These results are from small convenience samples; more detailed study of a larger group of randomly sampled U.S. waterpipe tobacco smokers will be valuable in understanding this behavior and developing effective strategies to prevent it."

I agree. I'm not quite sure why people (non-smokers or not) feel the need to control the general population's intake of products they deem "harmful". I don't understand why people always feel as though every smoker is trying to quit. I love smoking and have no intention of quitting anytime soon.

Note: This is not intended to be an attack on the poster's article, I actually thought it was pretty interesting. This is just my opinion.

i guess to many hookah smokers are chasing them down and blowing it in there faces lmao, god hookah smokers have to learn to be less extreme and just smoke in there houses ...

i dno man, dont you ever feel like goin out and takin the hookah with you on a nice day? like most of my friends had no school today so we met up in a park and smoked abit. imo, if someone can accept cigarettes then they should be able to accept hookah. i think that hookah is frowned upon because of its association with NHT use.

[shoresidejake]

and yes... being 23 years old... school HAS been apart of my life...

[RayVer]

This is just an abstact... not much information there. How can we read the actual report?

[Shisha.Bubbly]

Greetings HookahForum.com users:

Some of you may remember a survey conducted here in May-July 2006, with permission from the moderator. My colleagues and I used those results in a paper which has now been published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research. The journal holds the copyright to the paper itself, so I cannot provide you with a PDF in this forum. I can, however, provide you with a link to the MEDLINE abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1823630...Pubmed_RVDocSum

The PubMed ID is 18236304

Many universities have electronic access to Nicotine and Tobacco Research, so that may be a good resource if you are interested in seeing the entire paper.

Thanks to all,

Tom Eissenberg

I remember the survey quite well, filled it out in June 2006. Could not understand why they sent their rep. to implant a tiny chip in my left (facial) cheek. Maybe they wanted to know how often I toke the smoke.
Every so often though I feel a tingle in my cheek, a small noise in my left ear get nauseous and leave the hookah alone for days on end.

[gr!m]

Good little bit of info in there. Maybe now people can stop posting "How many time a month do you hookah?" topics! :angry face:

[spoolinspoon]

Time to order another pipe and some more tobaccy!

[zeppyrkr]

the last line bothers me..

"These results are from small convenience samples; more detailed study of a larger group of randomly sampled U.S. waterpipe tobacco smokers will be valuable in understanding this behavior and developing effective strategies to prevent it."

I agree. I'm not quite sure why people (non-smokers or not) feel the need to control the general population's intake of products they deem "harmful". I don't understand why people always feel as though every smoker is trying to quit. I love smoking and have no intention of quitting anytime soon.

Note: This is not intended to be an attack on the poster's article, I actually thought it was pretty interesting. This is just my opinion.

i guess to many hookah smokers are chasing them down and blowing it in there faces lmao, god hookah smokers have to learn to be less extreme and just smoke in there houses ...

i dno man, dont you ever feel like goin out and takin the hookah with you on a nice day? like most of my friends had no school today so we met up in a park and smoked abit. imo, if someone can accept cigarettes then they should be able to accept hookah. i think that hookah is frowned upon because of its association with NHT use.

as much as i would like to live in a world like that , thats not the fact, many people don't accept cigarettes and thats why many places are trying to ban it in public places, people have freedom here and choice and when your smoke is going into there public space i think they should have to right to be mad. and yes the appearance of the hookah doesn't make people happy either.

there are proper places to smoke and not to smoke, don't get mad at people for not liking it. i personally don't like cigarette smoke ...

[hookah hippie]

That was one short report. Was interesting and pretty much guessed all of the results. I felt some parts were irrelevent but whatever. Man I want to smoke but I got class in 25 mins and then time to vote...then time to smoke HOORAY!!

[Teissenb]

Hi all:

I apologize for being unclear. The link I provided is to the abstract, which is a short summary (usually about 250 words) of a larger report. The actual paper, which you can find in "Nicotine and Tobacco Research" is 5 journal pages long (pp 393-398), or about 2000 words (excluding references). The paper itself has much more detail. As I mentioned, I cannot post the paper itself because the journal holds the copyright. The "Discussion" section of the paper highlights the limitations of this study (such as non-representative sampling) but also argues that the data are valuable because there has been so little systematic investigation of tobacco smoking with a waterpipe (hookah). Please remember that what may be obvious to you folks is not so obvious to others around the country who are less familiar with hookah use. In particular, there is an unfortunate impression that hookahs smokers are actually smokers of illicit substances who just happen to smoke tobacco every now and then. One contribution of this paper is that it suggests that impression is false.

For those of you interested in what is in hookah smoke, you could use the link I gave and search for "Shihadeh" to find abstracts of papers that have investigated that issue (Shihadeh is the name of a scientist in Lebanon who is looking at this issue). This work is ongoing and we all recognize that there is much more to learn.

Thanks,

Tom Eissenberg

[gaia.plateau]

Too many big words in it for my brain to comprehend..

...The biggest words in the abstract are "convenience", "developing", and NHT... which of those do you need help with?

the last line bothers me..

I agree with you; waterpipe smoking is less harmful than cigarette smoking, definitely in regard to your overall health and very likely in regard to your lungs. Until even a single proper study is done on this, by which I mean one conducted by someone that actually knows how to smoke a hookah, and not by scientists whose grant money depends on a specific conclusion, no one has the authority to speculate on the health detriments of smoking ma'assel.

I don't think many people on this forum are of the perception that hookah is safe for you or your lungs (it isn't, nor is living in Beijing) as Mr. Eissenberg's article seems to indicate, but there's a difference between considering something to be a safe alternative, and considering it to be a safer alternative.

Most users believed that waterpipe
tobacco smoking was less harmful, less addictive,
and delivered less nicotine than cigarettes.

As far as scientific studies have been able to determine, it is.

Edit: I have the full text of this article, if anyone would like to read it, PM me.


Edited for NHT reference.
Edited February 6, 2008 by camelflage

[Teissenb]

Are you sure that we are talking about the same article? The quotes you cite do not appear in the Smith-Simone et al (2008) to which I provided a link in the original post. Who are the authors and what is the year of the article from which you are quoting?

Tom E.

[gaia.plateau]

Too right, my mistake. The search engine I was using only had the one issue from this year, and I just did ctrl+f ~ waterpipe, and clicked. I have the correct one now.

I still don't think you can do a quantitative analysis with entirely subjective questions, however, and pronounce waterpipe smoking as an "epidemic" that must be prevented. Waterpipe smoking is no more addictive than fast food and television, and far, far less harmful. Any external substance or activity that makes you "feel good" can be addictive- this includes heroin, sex, pain, country music, testicular cancer meetings, and indeed hookah. It's personal accountability that demands moderation in all these things.

Are you sure that we are talking about the same article? The quotes you cite do not appear in the Smith-Simone et al (2008) to which I provided a link in the original post. Who are the authors and what is the year of the article from which you are quoting?

Tom E.

Edited February 6, 2008 by gaia.plateau