While there has been no question for patrons of Athens' restaurants and bars that they can no longer light up in their old hang outs, there is still some confusion for patrons of hookah bar establishments of how the smoking ban will effect their business. According to Ohio law, any business that generates more than 80 percent of its profit from tobacco products is exempt from smokefree workplace laws. Though this may put most hookah bars and their owners in the clear, it is more problematic for others.
According to a widely-circulated report by the World Health Organization, smoking a hookah (also called shisha or water pipe) for just one hour can put 70% more nicotine and 100 to 200 times more smoke into one's body than smoking a single cigarette. These statistics might seem scary off the bat, but many hookah bars have since made improvements to diffuse the smokiness and to provide healthier forms of tobacco. Also, while cigarette smoking is a frequent activity (the average smoker is said to smoke about 5 cigarettes a day), smoking hookah tends to be less frequent.
I only bring up these statistics because their presentation to the public is one of the reasons that hookah bars are facing trouble. Many hookah bars are seen by customers as places to hang out with friends, eat, drink coffee or tea, study and of course, smoke hookah. Hookah "lounge" is another term used to for these businesses. Because these establishments are more than just tobacco shops and smoking stops, when store owners must bump their tobacco revenue up to 80 percent, it can be enough to change the entire environment of their business.
As more smoke-free laws have been enacted in Ohio, hookah bars have been coming up with ways to get around them, avoiding having to make major changes in their business that might alientate customers. For hookah bars that already comply with the 80 percent quota, like Pharaos in Athens (located on Mill Street), there doesn't seem to be a problem under the new laws. Other businesses, like the Shisha Lounge in Columbus, have had to replace food products and drinks with cigarette vending machines to get their revenue up from 2/3. Some hookah bars that serve food and drink have divided into two different businesses, one side for smoking and one as the restaurant area as a loophole. Many OU students that I talked to who frequent Pharaos said they liked the whole atmosphere of hookah lounges, and having to downsize certain aspects to make them strictly tobacco businesses would effect the experience.
If tobacoo businesses are pressured to up their push tobacco, they may rob their patrons of the evironment that brings them in the first place. Is 80 percent too much to demand of businesses that clearly make a substantial living from tobacco products already. These lounges are the last havens for cigarette and hookah smokers and soon they will be turned into nothing more than tobacco stores. The irony is that we will end up with more places to buy hookah and tobacco, and less places to use it.
Additional links:
2 comments:
The logic behind the hookah vs. cigarette danger seems slightly flawed early on when it compares an hour of smoking a hookah to a single cigarette. It takes me generally under ten minutes to smoke a cigarette, were I to multiply that by six for an hour (more than the average smoker has per day) then the cigarettes would most definitely be more dangerous. The way it was compared just seems vaguely misleading.
I really like this post. I know we had a hukah bar here and everything... I wonder if you could get the perspective of a couple of Athens area students about this.
Post a Comment