In hundreds of bars and cafes nationwide — from Fresno to Ames, Iowa, to Raleigh, N.C. — Americans are inhaling fruit-flavored tobacco through water pipes as Arab and Indian men have done for centuries.

This tradition is posing a new challenge to the anti-tobacco movement in the USA, which has helped pass more than 2,000 smoke-free laws.

I caught this in my morning CDC missive and it struck me because a number of my friends have started rocking the hookah recently.

My attitude towards smoking, and anti-smoking laws, is that you should be able to do it anywhere that doesn't force the second hand smoke on anyone who hasn't chosen to inhale it.

That does mean no smoking in public bars, but in no way excludes establishments designed primarily around smoking.

Ultimately, I think there's a big difference between cigarettes and hookahs. For one, cigarettes are portable and small, so people frequently smoke them *a lot*. It's a little tougher to deal with the whole hookah apparatus and i do think that mitigates it's risk. The other issue is use... the article does mention a Saudi man who smokes a hookah every day, but most people i know do it only occasionally, maybe a couple times a month at most. Even if each time counts as 36 cigarettes, if you do it monthly you're on about a 1 cigarette a day, equivalent. That's not so bad, really.