Abu Dhabi: Although smoking shisha — also known as ‘hubble bubble', ‘hookah' or ‘water pipe' — is illegal for those under 18, the fact remains that the law is flouted with abandon. Health experts and educators are now calling on authorities to strictly enforce no-smoking rules and ban youngsters from smoking shisha openly in cafes and restaurants.
Gulf News toured several shisha and internet cafes in Abu Dhabi to get a clearer picture about the social implications of the shisha craze. All names of young people interviewed herein have been changed for confidentiality.
"I was first with my dad and his wife who smokes shisha frequently. She let me try it in my dad's presence so that I know how it tastes. She was hoping that this gesture will protect me from the curiosity to explore unsupervised. My friends kept on pressuring me to go out and have shisha with them. I did several times, and still do," said Hisham, a 13-year-old Egyptian.
Age no bar
"I was never asked about my age at any shisha cafe or internet cafe," he added.
A.M., 17, an Emirati has been smoking shisha since the age of 15. "I go frequently to internet cafe with my friends to play games. Smoking appears to be allowed to all ages, no one questions us, actually in one of them I was allowed to smoke shisha that I had brought with me," he said.
"No one questions our age at shisha cafes either; they just care about the profit," he says.
It was a surprise that all youngsters interviewed were nearly unanimous in their view that the price of shisha was not a problem.
"We always managed to order one or two shishas. My friends and I would contribute to buy them since we all could share smoking them," said Saif, 14, a Palestinian.
According to a study by Dr. Mahmoud Fikri and Bassam Abi Sa'ab at the Preventive Medicine section in the Ministry of Health, 14.3 per cent of young males and 2.9 per cent of young females are smokers, and constant exposure to tobacco smoke at home and in public, is only expected to add to their numbers. The presence of an environment conducive to smoking, and encouraging young people to start smoking at an early age, remains the most important contributing factor.
Clear limits
UAE Federal Law no 15 (2009) - clause 11 states: "It is prohibited to license cafes or similar places which provide any types of tobacco or its products within residential buildings or housing areas, or near them as per the distance determined in the executive directives of this law. Such directives shall determine, in coordination with the concerned authority, the establishments to which licence might be given to sell tobacco or its products, including their working hours. Cafes or similar places existing at present shall settle their status within two years as of the date of this law by changing the activity or moving to another place."
Clause 5
The following acts are considered prohibited: Selling or initiating sale of tobacco or tobacco products to persons who don't exceed 18 years of age. The seller has the right to ask the buyer to furnish evidence that he is of legal age and desist from accepting ignorance of age as a justification.
