“Hookah smoke can do as much or more damage than cigarette smoke because you have to inhale more deeply,” Councilman Vincent Gentile, a Brooklyn Democrat, told Crain’s New York. “In fact, one session of hookah can be like smoking 35 to 100 cigarettes.”

In 2010, Gentile introduced a bill that would prohibit new hookah bars from opening and existing hookah bars from expanding or moving to a new location. The legislation also requires existing establishments scofflaw hookah owners from illegally selling tobacco instead of shisha.

“We’re not trying to close down anybody who’s already in business,” Gentile added.

A recent study from the University of California San Francisco found that hookah smoking could increase levels of benzene and carbon monoxide, which ups a smoker’s risk for lung cancer and leukemia. The researchers confirmed that hookah doesn’t make a safer alternative to cigarette smoking given the toxins a person can inhale from it.

Temecula Police officers were seen at the middle school on May 2 to investigate the incident which also involved four other students who were allegedly in possession of hookah pens.

Sgt. Lisa McConnell, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman, told SWRNN that she confirmed the disciplinary action from the school’s principal but did not elaborate the specific punishment given to the TMS students to maintain student privacy.

Hookah pens are electronic cigarettes that are advertised as having no nicotine and tar content. They are quickly gaining popularity among party goers, regular smokers, and teens who believe the products make better alternative to traditional cigarettes. A hookah pen is sold starting at $7.99 and up.

Under California law, selling of electronic cigarettes to minor is considered illegal. However, it was found that some teens in the region are obtaining hookah pens from various sources, including older siblings.

Melanie Norton, spokeswoman for the Temecula Valley Unified School District, said that the four other TMS students who were caught with hookah pens have likely received citations from Temecula Police for being under age and in possession of an item containing nicotine.

First let’s get to know more about it. What’s a hookah pen and how does it work?

Dr. Donald Bucklin, Regional Medical Director for U.S. HealthWorks, described a hookah pen in his op-ed article on Rocklin and Roseville Today as “an e-cigarette for the avant-garde.” That’s probably because it sports a stylish and colorful design that are quickly attracting the attention of club goers, regular smokers, and even some celebrities.

Hookah pens are available in different flavors, such as Grape, Vanilla, Coffee, Strawberry, Blueberry, Peach, Apple, and more. They are advertised as tobacco-, tar-, and nicotine-free.

Making up a hookah pen are the battery, the filling, and the evaporator. When you take a puff, the battery heats up the evaporator to vaporize a liquid that you inhale. At the end of a hookah pen is an LED light which illuminates every time you inhale.

In addition to being trendy, hookah pens are widely favored because they are portable that you can practically carry  one anywhere you go. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to one very important question: do they make a safer alternative to hookah smoking?

As Dr. Bucklin pointed out: “The use of a hookah pen is not dangerous in and of itself.” However, they do not come without some consequences.

The biggest danger of hookah pens is they can encourage people to smoke more of it and may even lead to a certain level of addiction. People who use hookah pen may also experience throat ache or muscle aches given the product’s Propylene Glycol content.

It’s also noteworthy to understand that a hookah pen is only good for 500 up to 700 puffs, which means, if you are a heavy hookah smoker you may end up spending ten dollars a week or double that amount.

The long-term effect of smoking hookah pens, if there’s any, is not fully known. Some say that even though the product is being advertised as nicotine-free, it still contains very small amount of nicotine, the basic ingredient found in cigarettes.  Now whether a hookah pen does have or doesn’t have nicotine content, the only way to know for sure if it’s okay or detrimental for your health is to talk with your health care provider before you start using it.

Researchers from the University of Southern California looked into the data of more than 1,000 adolescents who took part in the Midwestern Prevention Project (MPP), a community-based substance abuse prevention program. They were surprised to find that friends’ influence to smoke has more effect in junior high than in high school.

“Based on social developmental model research, we thought friends would have more influence on cigarette use during high school than junior high school,” lead author Yue Liao, M.P.H., a doctoral student in the department of preventive medicine’s Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, said in a news release. “But what we found was friends have greater influence during junior high school than high school. We think the reason may be that friends’ cigarette use behavior may have a stronger influence on youth who start smoking at a younger age. During high school, cigarette use might represent the maintenance of behavior rather than a result of peer influence.”

The researchers has also observed gender difference in friends’ and parental influence. Friends’ influence on cigarette smoking was higher for girls than boys during 9th and 10th grade. However, there was an increasing trend in friends’ influence from 9th to 11th among boys, whereas friends and parents had less influence on girls from 10th to 12th grade.

Liao said this could be explained by the fact that boys tend to foster friendship by engaging in shared behavior, while girls are more focused on emotional sharing.

The researchers hope their findings would pave the way for an improved intervention program in cigarette smoking primarily geared towards middle school students. Liao also recommends future study on sibling effects for a more complete picture of familial influence.

Researchers at the University of California San Francisco studied eight men and five women who smoked both shisha and cigarettes for a specific period during the study. The volunteers were then asked to undergo urine test and blood test to measure the toxins  inhaled from shisha smoking.

According to research chemist Peyton Jacob III, PhD, and UCSF tobacco researcher Neal Benowitz, MD, both based at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, those who smoked shisha has increased levels of benzene and carbon monoxide.

Benzene has been shown to increase one’s risk for developing leukemia, while carbon monoxide is especially dangerous to people with heart or respiratory conditions.

“People want to know if it is a lesser health risk if they switch from cigarettes to smoking a water pipe on a daily basis,” Jacob said in a university news release. “We found that water-pipe smoking is not a safe alternative to cigarette smoking, nor is it likely to be an effective harm-reduction strategy.”

The researchers also found the heat coming from shisha smoking causes chemical reactions that could up one’s chances for lung cancer.

“In addition to delivering toxic substances from the charcoal and tobacco, the heat causes chemical reactions in the mixture which produce toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs),” Jacob explained. “Some PAHs are highly carcinogenic and can cause lung cancer.”

Shisha, also widely known as hookah, has been popularized in Middle Eastern countries. In the United States, a 2009 survey showed three in ten university students had tried shisha  smoking at least one occasion. But even though many people think it is a safer alternative to cigarettes, health experts warn that shisha use and exposure can result to equally harmful health problems.

Advocates argue that snuff, tobacco gum, chewing tobacco, and other smokeless tobacco products should be promoted as part of a “harm-reduction” strategy to encourage smokers to switch from cigarettes.

John Lowder, Reynolds American spokesman, said a growing number of study shows that the risk associated with smokeless tobacco is significantly lower than the risks associated with cigarettes.

Brad Rodu, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, supported the idea that smokeless tobacco products are safer that cigarettes. He said such products have helped Sweden in reducing its smoking rate, and therefore, could potentially help the U.S. save millions of lives.

“Yes, it is maintaining the addiction, but at a vastly lower risk,” said Rodu, whose research is supported by tobacco industry.

Dr. Joel Nitzkin, a senior fellow a conservative research group in Washington, D.C., said the mortality rate among smokeless tobacco users is 98 percent lower than the mortality rate in people who smoke cigarettes.

But despite the apparent positive side presented at the hearing, federal health experts are not convinced smokeless tobacco products make a safer alternative to cigarettes. State and federal public health experts, as well as those from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, American Lung Association, American Cancer Society and Springfield’s genHIkids Coalition have bashed the proposal and said it manipulates scientific evidence.

They said the so-called “harm reduction” approach is designed to increase the sales of smokeless products and drive more children to become nicotine addicts and then lifelong smokers, The State Journal-Register reports.

“There is very little, if any, evidence that offering smokeless tobacco as a harm-reduction strategy will reduce the number of people who smoke,” said Dr. Kemia Sarraf, an internal-medicine physician and genHkids president.

Sarraf said taxpayer’s money should be put to good use by supporting evidence-based methods of reducing tobacco use, deaths, and diseases instead of encouraging tobacco companies to cash in on people who want to quit smoking

A cross-sectional study of more than 7,000 adolescents, aged 12 to 17, found tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke may increase one’s risk for kidney-related illnesses. According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, those who smoke or are exposed to secondhand smoke have lower estimated glomerular filtration rates — a common measure of how well the kidneys are working. The findings, which were published in the April issue of Pediatrics, support earlier conclusions that tobacco smoke can damage the kidneys.

“Tobacco as a chronic kidney disease risk factor is of great concern given the high prevalence of use and the chronicity that most often accompanies this exposure. Protecting young people from active smoking is essential since nearly 80 percent of adults who smoke begin smoking by 18 years of age,” explained Ana Navas-Acien, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and an associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences.

The thing with kidney-related diseases is that they don’t show symptoms until it’s too late. But your health care provider may perform blood or urine tests to determine whether your kidneys are functioning well. If you are living an unhealthy lifestyle, you may be advised by your physician to make changes in your diet, including the need to stop smoking.

In 2011, researchers at the Duke University Medical Center found that quitting tobacco use could stop one’s risk for developing renal cancer, the deadliest form of kidney cancer. Dr. Thomas J. Polascik, director of Urologic Oncology at the Duke Cancer Institute said the public should be educated about the direct role of smoking in kidney health. People should be aware that quitting cigarettes can help smokers lower their chances of developing severe kidney cancer, as well as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

In addition to giving up tobacco use, kidney toxins can be avoided by drinking plenty of water, limiting the use of OTC drugs or prescription painkillers, keeping your blood pressure in target range, reducing salt intake, and avoiding the use of street drugs.

UCSD administrators explain that the policy is aimed at saving lives, improving the environment, and contributing positively to the health and well-being of everyone on the campus. And rather than being punitive, the university will be focusing more on educating all students, faculty, staff, and parents and visitors about the need to develop healthy habits.

But while the new policy is well-intentioned, Chase Donnally, president of UCSD Young Americans for Liberty, told Campus Reform that  many UCSD students are likely to ignore the ban, saying it’s “less about student health and more about controlling student behavior.”

“E-cigarettes are a quitting method,” Donnally said. “They’re not something you start doing; they’re something that you do in order to quit, and if they really cared about student health, it seems like those would be allowed.”

Smokeless tobacco products, also known as smoking cessation therapy, are viewed by many smokers as a safe way to quit smoking. Recent statistics show there are approximately 10 million users of smokeless tobacco, 3 million of which are people younger than 21. However, public health officials say these products are not without some dangers. Even though nicotine replacement products, such as snuff or chewing tobacco, contain very small amounts of nicotine they are still believed to increase one’s risk for oral cancer, nicotine addiction, and gum disease.

The ads, which began April 1, features inspiring stories of people whose lives were changed forever either because of smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke. One story is about a man who suffers from COPD and now agonizing about how to tell his grandson he may not be around to share his life much longer. Then there’s the story of a 40-year-old with diabetes whose smoking led to heart surgery, blindness in one eye, amputation, and kidney failure.

CDC’s new ads follow the success of last year’s national education ad campaign, “Tips from Former Smokers,” which generated increased overall call volume to 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

“Smoking and secondhand smoke kill – and they also harm smokers and non-smokers.  The Tips from Former Smokers campaign shows the painful effects of smoking through former smokers, in a way that numbers alone cannot,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., said in a news release.  “These are the kinds of ads that smokers tell us help motivate them to quit, saving lives and money.”

Despite the dangers associated with tobacco use, nearly one in five adults in the United States still smoke.  Almost 90 percent of smokers started before they were 18, and many of them experience life-changing health effects at a relatively early age. Smoking harms nearly every organ in the body, increasing one’s risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, respiratory problems, lung cancer, kidney cancer, and bladder cancer, to name a few.

The new CDC ads will run for at least 12 weeks on television, radio, and billboards, online, and in theaters, magazines, and newspapers nationwide.

A group of researchers from the U.S., the U.K. and New Zealand developed a genetic risk profile for heavy smoking based on earlier studies by other research teams. They then examined their own long-term study of 1,000 New Zealanders and found that those who had high-risk genetic profile were more likely to engage in daily smoking as teenagers and eventually become as heavy smokers.

“Genetic risk accelerated the development of smoking behavior,” Daniel Belsky, a post-doctoral research fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development and the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, said in a news release. “Teens at a high genetic risk transitioned quickly from trying cigarettes to becoming regular, heavy smokers.”

The team’s findings, which appeared on March 27 in JAMA Psychiatry, were supported by multiple grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, as well as the U.K. Medical Research Council and the New Zealand Health Research Council.

The study did not predict whether a person would try cigarettes, however, it showed that genetic risks was related to the development of smoking problems.

Among the teens who tried cigarettes, those with a high-risk genetic profile were at 24 percent greater risk to become daily smokers by age 15, and 43 percent more likely to smoke one pack a day by age 18.

As adults, those with high-risk profiles were found to be at 27 percent higher risk to become nicotine dependent, and 22 percent more likely to fail in their attempts to quit smoking. By age 38, those with high-risk genetic profile had smoked more than 7,000 cigarettes than the average smoker, the study noted.

Given their findings, the researchers recommend that public health policies continue to target prevention and intervention to help teens who might have the genetics to become regular smokers later in life.