Commentary:

We are students from the East County Youth Coalition, a student group working to curb the effects of underage drinking and drug use among peers and in the community. We recently wrote a piece about the impact a new hookah lounge that went in down the street from our school has had on students and the neighborhood.

Smoking hookah is primarily used as a cultural activity. However, our society has abused this tradition (like many other things) for its own good.

As high school students, we see that other students are abusing this substance because it’s “fun,” and most people say, “It’s not harmful.” But smoking tobacco through water does not filter out cancer-causing chemicals. Water-filtered smoke can damage the lungs and heart as much as cigarette smoke, according to Bacchus Network, a college-based substance abuse prevention group.

Most people don’t realize that this is a tobacco-based substance and you are actually harming yourself and others around you.

Compared to a single cigarette, hookah smoke is known to contain higher levels of arsenic, lead and nickel, 36 times more tar, and 15 times more carbon monoxide than cigarettes. Also, a 45 to 60 minute hookah session can expose the smoker to approximately the same amount of tar and nicotine as one pack of cigarettes, according to Bacchus.

Hookah has become the party-starter drug, or just what some kids do to relax after finals or maybe even a long day. Pop culture has coined the phrase “turnt up” for when you’re at a party, getting high or doing drugs.

Some kids like the feeling of being “turnt up” or having a buzz, so when you ask them about not smoking hookah, or “turning it down,” they just ask why wouldn’t you want to feel like that?

A county initiative to encourage healthy lifestyles and public health in the community has made an effort to address hookah smoke in East County. Live Well San Diego Building Better Health East Region Substance Abuse Committee’s policy goals include developing policies prohibiting indoor and outdoor smoking and hookah use at commercial establishments in the East County.

Even with this goal, it seems like more and more hookah lounges are popping up in the community. For example, a third hookah lounge has opened in Spring Valley recently – within the proximity of 8 schools.

As students at a high school near this new hookah lounge, we feel this has a negative influence on the youth in our community. The newest hookah lounge took the place of an ice cream shop where students used to go after school or football games. It was seen as a safe haven, and somewhere fun we could go together. Now that it’s a hookah lounge, it’s a place we legally are not even allowed to enter.

One option to regulate these hookah lounges would be to require every hookah establishment to hire a designated security guard, or bouncer; to be sure underage customers aren’t let in to the lounge.

Requiring special training for checking IDs should be mandatory for hookah lounges, especially when they are so close to schools.

Another option would be for the County to require a specific distance each lounge can be from a school. At least a mile would be a reasonable distance, considering many lounges are within walking distance from schools.

The normalization of these hookah lounges in the community is unacceptable.