By Anna Rice
The Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) passed a series of anti-smoking laws last month, including one that will force hookah bars, popular among some college students, to close within 10 years.
Another law banned smoking on restaurant patios immediately and prohibited the sale of tobacco on college campuses and in pharmacies, effective next month.
Peter Gorgiev, a sophomore biology major who said he smokes hookah at least once a week, said he feels the hookah ban is unfair for the bars’ owners.
“People choose to smoke on their own. It’s a mistake to go after the bars,” said Gorgiev, who said he often smokes hookah at the Nile Lounge in Allston.
Kevin Cavanagh, a freshman undecided major, said he does not think banning tobacco sales on campuses will curb smoking.
“Kids will go wherever,” he said. “What is it, like right around the corner to get a pack of cigarettes?”
Mark Burke, owner of the Sheesha Lounge in Allston, described his hookah bar as a warm, intimate setting with decor that reflects his travels to foreign countries.
Since the lounge just opened last year, Burke said he was surprised to hear about the proposal to strengthen anti-smoking laws.
“There’s not really much you can do as a business owner once you have opened and they come up with this initiative,” Burke said.
The city’s five hookah bars and six cigar lounges have been granted a 10-year grace period before they will have to close. After that, existing lounges can apply for another 10-year extenuation.
The vote was originally scheduled to take place in November, but the BPHC postponed it to review the hundreds of comments, most in opposition to the ban, sent via mail and voiced at public hearings by Boston residents, said Ann Scales, spokeswoman for the BPHC.
The original proposal for the ban would have forced hookah bars to shutter within five years.
After considering complaints from hookah smokers and bar owners, the grace period was changed to a decade.
The regulations will strengthen the current tobacco ban in Boston, which has prohibited smoking inside restaurants and most bars and workplaces since 2004.
Scales said the ban is intended to protect college students as well as Boston residents from the health risks of smoking. Scales said some board members are taking the stance that students come to Boston to study, not to damage their health smoking at local hookah bars.
“As a regulatory agency, it’s our job to protect the well being of the residents of this city, including young people,” Scales said. “At our public hearing we had a lot of young people who spoke in favor of tightening tobacco regulations in the city of Boston.” The public hearing was held Oct. 8, and Boston residents could submit comments to the BPHC until Nov. 3.
Scales declined to comment about why the Commission passed the ban despite public opposition.
Scales also said the BPHC targeted hookah bars and cigarette sales on college campuses because the commission wants to prevent students from picking up smoking as a habit.
Cigarettes are not sold on Northeastern’s campus, though they are available in stores immediately off campus. They can be purchased at Boston University’s main campus and the Boston University Medical Campus in the South End.
“If you start smoking at a young age it’s harder to kick the habit as you get older,” Scales said.
Thirty-one percent of college students smoked cigarettes compared to 25 percent of the overall population, according to the federal government’s 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the most recent available data. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 used tobacco products at the highest rate, the study said.
The proposal for the new anti-smoking laws gained support when a study conducted by the state Department of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health linked the current smoking ban to a decline in the number of Massachusetts residents who died from heart attacks since it first went into effect, Scales said.
Dr. Michael Sieger, a tobacco control specialist and professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, said he supports the ban because hookah and cigar bars pose a health risk to employees.
People are more likely to disregard the fact they will be inhaling second hand smoke when they take a job at one of these establishments
Sieger said he is not against letting people make their own choices.
“I don’t believe we should shut down hookah bars to protect the college students who go there,” Sieger said. “I believe people should have the autonomy to make their own decisions.”
Sieger said smoking hookah does pose a serious health risk, but does not equal the risk of smoking cigarettes and using other tobacco products if done only on occasion.
According to a 2008 American Lung Association report, hookah smoke has similar dangerous components found in cigarette smoke, which have been linked to heart disease, cancer and addiction.
Katie Crouch, a sophomore international affairs major who said she usually smokes hookah at the Nile Lounge, said she enjoys hookah bars because of their ambiance and because there are few other venues open to people younger than 21 in Boston.
Crouch said she doesn’t believe her smoking habit will have a serious impact on her health because she only participates once or twice a month.
“Obviously you can’t go out to bars [when under 21], and there are few clubs and they’re all overcrowded,” Crouch said. “Hookah bars are places where you can sit down and hang around for a couple hours.”
Paul Berkeley, president of the Allston Civic Association, said before the ban was given final approval the city should have come up with a reasonable compromise for owners of new hookah bars like Burke.
“If you give people the green light to go ahead and do something and then they do it and then you take it away from them, I don’t think it’s very fair,” said Berkeley.
Neither the Nile Lounge nor the Sheesha Lounge, both frequented by Northeastern students, have liquor licenses. Both Gorgiev and Crouch said they don’t drink before or while they smoke hookah because the experience is supposed to be relaxing.
“It’s essentially a nice alternative to the bar scene,” Burke said.
Some Northeastern students said they feel like the BPHC should not have the right to control their decision of whether or not they will smoke hookah.
“People go to a hookah bar for the purpose of smoking hookah,” said Kate Ziegler, who graduated from Northeastern in 2008 with an International Affairs degree and is a regular hookah smoker. “They’re not infringing on the rights of people who don’t want to be around smokers. It’s not anyone’s place to tell them they can’t choose to go there.”
Jeff Dinardo, a sophomore psychology major, said he thinks the BPHC should focus on eliminating cigarette smoking instead of hookah smoking since secondhand cigarette smoke is everywhere.
“It’s not like someone’s going to be walking down the street smoking a hookah and blowing it in your face,” said Dinardo, who does not smoke. “If cigarettes are still legal then no one should be allowed to complain about people smoking inside hookah bars.”
