Angelah Nothando Mlotshwa
Environment and Health Reporter
The so-called ‘Ama2k’ are known for their various controversial behaviors that include outrageous outfits(sense of fashion), the way they talk(slang), and their drinking habits.
They have often found themselves in conflict with authorities and the older generations.
Most of the time this discord arises because of the clash between these different generations on values, beliefs, and behaviors.
One of the behaviors that are irking the old generation is the popular abuse by the younger generation of Shisha (Hookah). According to the World Health Organization, the volume of smoke that is inhaled in an hour-long Shisha session is equivalent to smoking between 100 and 200 cigarettes.
“Using a water pipe to smoke tobacco poses a serious health hazard to smokers and others exposed to smoke emitted. According to the findings, a typical one-hour-long water pipe smoking session involves inhaling 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled with a single cigarette, ” said the Philanthropist and the WHO Global Ambassador Michael Bloomberg in an interview that was published by a local daily newspaper.
The name ‘Shisha’ is an ancient Persian word for glass. Shisha originates from North India and has been around for a long period of about five hundred years.
It is a drug originally made from smoked coconut, consisting of whole leaves of tobacco, carbon dioxide, Carcinogens, Tar, Nicotine, and heavy metals like Lead, and Arsenic which pose health mutagen.
These chemicals lead to higher chances of suffering from stroke, infectious diseases, a higher concentration of toxins that causes oral herpes, disrupts lung function leading to chronic obstructive, pulmonary diseases or bronchitis, higher risks to suffer from heart attacks, leads to narrowing of arteries which then creates blockage disrupting the free flow of blood, heart diseases like heart failure, angina, higher chances of suffering from lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer and reduces oxygen supply towards skin leading to premature aging.
“Most people use flavors only and a few numbers use them to smoke weed with a different flavor to cover the weed smell. Headrush kuita kunenge tumabayo turi faint twakawanda tunonakidza. Shisha costs around 40 usd depending on places and flavors s. Beer gets you tipsy, shisha is for fun if there is no weed you won’t feel anything it’s only breathing a flavored smoke, flavors cause lung cancer and it is written on a paper of flavors”, said one of the shisha smokers.
Research shows that no law has been put in place to restrict shisha in Zimbabwe.
However, there are some tobacco-free versions of shisha, which use mixed flavored herbs and all sorts of concoctions. These are heavily advertised to be harm free and better than the tobacco version of the hookah and therefore people can enjoy these without the harmful effects of tobacco.