The General History of the Hookah

The Hookah was first created to elevate peoples' states of mind. Although born in India, this device spread to the countries of the Near East, Far East, the Arab world, Persia, East Africa, and all the way to the Ottoman Empire. With the discovery of Tobacco, the original form of the hookah evolved, and its uses changed so that it became a device synonymous with pleasurable smoking experiences.
The Hooka’s Indian Roots
The hookah is also known today as the water pipe, the Shisha or the hubbly-bubbly. It was originally used in India to extract the medicinal value contained in plant seeds.
The Hooka in Different Forms
The hooka in its original and simplest of forms was made from a coconut shell base, also known as the narci. This coconut shell was hollowed, and a straw was placed inside it for the purposes of inhaling substances placed in the shell�s core. After some years the device reached Egypt, and it was in Egypt that the Egyptians changed its form further by replacing the coconut shell with a gourd.
Upon reaching the Persian peninsula, the Persians developed the hookah even further, bringing it closer to its modern form. They substituted the straw originally used by the Indians, with a soft and more flexible hose, making the hookah more practical and easier to handle.
These changes came in time with the region’s first introduction to Tobacco. Seeing the newly discovered substance in a whole new light due to the more relaxing effects it provides, the Persians experimented with the possibility of inhaling it using the Hookah. With this idea in mind, it was soon discovered that the hookah device needed to evolve from its original form so as to satisfy this purpose. A bronze tray, known at the time as "Ser" was placed above the hookah’s body to hold the tobacco. The type of Tobacco popular amongst the Persians at the time was known as tambeki. In Syria and Yemen, the Hookah was developed even further so that it took on the form of a long wooden head, an iron stand and a hose sewn from thick cloth.
The first Hookah bar in the Ottoman region was opened in 1554 by a gentleman named Hakem from Aleppo and his partner, a nobleman by the name of Hems from Damascus. This first bar laid the foundations for many others to follow. Hookah bars at the time were places where people of high social standing met.
During the 17th century, the Ottomans changed the hookah into a more practical smoking device. Above the "head" they placed a bowl of baked clay and they also added to it a mouthpiece that connected the hose to the smoker�s mouth. The Hooka at the time had a body of glass, crystal, rock-crystal, porcelain and even silver, a head of brass and silver, and a pipe holder decorated with carvings depicting scenes from nature.
Because the ever so popular Hookah had a base made of glass, it was only natural for the glass making industry to also flourish in popularity. It was in the 19th Century and during the reign of Selim III that a man by the name of Mehmet Dede set up a workshop in Beykoz, a place where the famous Beykoz glassware was made. After setting up a series of workshops in that area, a glass factory was soon established in 1899. The local factory however was unable to compete with the glassware imported from Europe at the time and it soon closed down. The first glass factory in the modern sense was established upon the orders of Atatrk in 1934 during the Republic period, and it was then that the prettiest hookahs in history were made.
The Hookah Today
Hookahs are still used today, but are seen as the more pleasurable form of smoking only employed as a pass time in coffee houses across the region.

Tobacco marketing and teen smoking

Every year the tobacco industry spends literally, billions of dollars on promotion, sponsorship and advertising. Tobacco advertising increases tobacco consumption which in turn kills people. Teens are at especially high risk of starting to smoke product advertisements and viewing such ads alone is guaranteed to start more youths on this deadly habit. 

Authors of a new study published online this week in the Pediatrics journal state: 

"Our results support the notion of a content-related effect of cigarette advertisements and underlines the specificity of the relationship between tobacco marketing and teen smoking; exposure to cigarette advertisements, but not other advertisements, is associated with smoking initiation."

Scientists from Institute for Therapy and Health Research in Kiel, Germany, and colleagues examined the results from a longitudinal survey of 2,102 adolescents aged 10 to 17 who had never smoked. After exposure to advertisements for six brands of cigarettes and eight commercial products at different frequencies, it was revealed that 13% of adolescents had started to smoke after nine months time. 

Most smokers take up smoking before the age of 18. Children whose parents or siblings smoke are around three times more likely to smoke than children living in non-smoking households. 

Although around 60% of teenagers report that they have never smoked, among those who do experiment with smoking many become addicted to nicotine and continue to smoke as adults. 

The effectiveness of youth-focused health education is limited and at best appears to delay the age of starting to smoke. It appears that the best way of reducing youth smoking is to have comprehensive tobacco control policies in place that apply to the whole population. 

Exposure to other advertisements, for products, such as sweets, clothes, and mobile telephones, did not predict smoking initiation. High exposure to cigarette advertising remained a significant predictor of smoking initiation even after controlling for other factors. 

The study's authors continue: 

"The study results support the notion of a content-related effect of cigarette advertisements and underline the specificity of the relationship between tobacco marketing and teen smoking initiation."

Tobacco companies such as British American Tobacco and Philip Morris have adopted a public posture of opposition to teenage smoking and even funded anti-smoking initiatives for teenagers. But an investigation by the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) which is based in the United Kingdom, and The Cancer Research Campaign, has revealed that this is no more than a public relations strategy. The purpose is to fend off meaningful restrictions on tobacco advertising and gain PR advantage, while proposing only measures that are unlikely to reduce youth smoking and likely make it more attractive by positioning cigarettes as an adult product and smoking as rebellious. 

Virtually all tobacco advertising is now illegal in the UK and many other countries. The Tobacco Advertising & Promotion Act 2002 came into force in November 2002 in the UK, with most advertising ending on 14th February 2003 and a gradual fade out for the rest by July 2005. 

Since the implementation of the final stage of the tobacco advertising ban in 2005, ASH has carefully monitored the situation to try and stop any direct or indirect breaches of the law. 

Tobacco companies have concentrated sponsorship on successful, high-profile sports in order to ensure maximum coverage for their products. These sports are extremely attractive to sponsors and other companies have gradually replaced sponsorship from tobacco companies without difficulty. Even Formula One, the sport most reliant on tobacco, announced in 1998 that it would replace its tobacco sponsorship within four years. 

Tobacco is a unique consumer product as there is no safe level of use and half of all life-long smokers die prematurely from smoking-related diseases. Despite the harm caused by smoking, tobacco products are largely unregulated while medicinal nicotine used as an aid to stop smoking is very tightly controlled.