levite

I like hookah bars, myself, although I admit I first enjoyed hookahs in college, for smoking dirty salad (weed with hash mixed in). But later, when I went to Israel, I developed a taste for hanging out and smoking regular nargilah tabak (so they call tobacco hookahs in Israel) from time to time. It's a mellow hang out thing with friends, I never could see doing it alone, and I never did it more than once a week at the most. But I still enjoy going from time to time with friends. Hookah culture is a lot like pot culture-- probably one reason why there's so much overlap-- in that it involves a lot of sharing and a lot of ritual.

And as for arising out of shared cultures, I don't know.... Hookah cafes are popular in Israel and the Arab countries, as well as in many parts of the Indian subcontinent. I have never been to a hookah cafe in America that was not run by an Israeli, an Arab, a Persian, or someone from South Asia-- with the sole exception of one in the front of a head shop that was run by a Dutch guy who was clearly trying to emulate the Amsterdam experience sans the dank.

In any case, the tobacco is cured and flavored heavily with fruit and/or herbal syrups, which some can find a bit overpowering. I never got into really sweet flavors like pineapple or grape, but strong herbal flavors like rose or lemon verbena are nice; lots of folks in Israel seem to enjoy lemon-mint, and I've occasionally enjoyed flavors as sweet as pomegranate or orange. Generally, one bowl of tobacco lasts two to four people for one to three hours, in my experience; and at least in my crowd, we rarely shared more than one bowl in an evening.

The notion that hookah tobacco is free of nicotine, however, is completely erroneous. If it is made by local companies in the Middle East or South Asia, it is generally far more free of noxious synthetic additives than American tobacco, nor has it been genetically modified to increase the nicotine concentration, as American tobacco has been; but all tobacco-- as far as I know-- has some amount of nicotine. Some of the more deleterious effects of the smoke are somewhat mitigated by the water filtration, but not entirely so. I am inclined to doubt the notion that the cooling of the water means that one inhales more deeply and holds the smoke for longer: that's probably true if you're smoking pot or hash, where it increases the effect to inhale deeper and hold longer. But in my experience, one smokes a hookah for the flavor and the atmosphere, not for any effects of the tobacco. One generally does in hold the smoke for very long, nor have I seen anyone ever inhale hookah tobacco the way weed or hash is sucked in.

In short, it tends to be much less addictive than smoking cigarettes or chewing tobacco; done in moderation, it's probably unlikely to give you cancer or emphysema. Nonetheless, I am sure it is not as harmless as the new-fallen snow, either. But my guess is that it's probably not much worse for you than getting drunk from time to time, or smoking herb from time to time.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)