There are dangers to any consumption of tobacco and more uses are growing more popular every day, but young adults consider hookah safer than cigarettes, viewing it as the less riskier option to their health. Both hookahs and e-cigarettes are becoming a rapidly spreading trend among the younger generation and are generally viewed as the healthier option to smoking.
Olivia Wackowski and Cristine Delveno from the School of Public Health at Rutgers University have conducted a study on over 2,800 young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 years old, inquiring on their smoking habits and potential alternative to cigarettes.
The statistics seemed different in some respects where it concerned group ages, such as the fact that 62.1% of young adults between 18 to 24 thought e-cigarettes were less risky than regular cigarettes, while 54.6% of those between 25 and 34 shared the same belief. The overall number seems to indicate that over half smokers and non-smokers alike think e-cigarettes are the healthier option.
Among the participants, 32.7% of young adults between 18 and 24 believed that smoking hookah is better than regular cigarettes, while a lesser 18.5% of those in the second group between 25 and 34 thought the same of the habit.
Half of the participants believed that hookah, cigars, smokeless tobacco and methanol cigarettes were just about as risky as regular cigarettes, and 30% of them believed that the alternatives were even more harming than normal smoking. However, that did not reportedly stop them from using them.
Researchers believed this might be caused due to the different types of advertising used, which usually pins the alternatives as the more “healthier” way of using tobacco. Be it because of the more advanced technology used in creating them or the fact that they offer a wider range of flavors, it seems the young generation thinks of hookahs and e-cigarettes as better options.
It encourages both smokers and non-smokers to pick up the habits by promoting their products as less harmful to their health, which successfully coaxes even some teenagers to try them repeated times. There are a high number of studies on the topic, and opinions are still conflicting if the use of alternative means is, in fact, better than smoking.
The overall results seem to suggest that the public certainly believes it, and even if they were told otherwise, they would not stop. However, for non-smokers, it’s definitely and very obviously not the healthier choice.
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