hookah!?

[Amanda93]

Is hookah that bad for you?!

[Manjusri]

Hookah is flavored tobacco. Tobacco is known to cause many forms of cancer, COPD, emphysema, and all that good stuff your health teach has told you about.

[norcaldude18]

It isnt as bad for you as a cigarette or cigar, but it isn't good for you either. If you do it once in a while it isnt going to kill you. If you do it a few times a year you'll probably be just fine.

[workingatperfect]

It's bad for you, but I don't think it's as bad as cigarettes. There's different kinds of shisha. Herbal is probably the healthiest, as it's not actually tobacco I don't think, and it has no nicotine.
The other 2 kinds ARE tobacco and do have nicotine, but I'm not sure about the other chemicals in cigarettes.

[Neverender]

Shisha is a lot safer than other conventional forms of tobacco, you also aren't supposed to inhale Shisha, just taste the smoke.

The cancer risk isn't worth worrying about unless you're in a cloud of smoke all day err'day.

[Inventor2]

Shisha is boild tobacco with flavor. So when its boild most of the tar, nicotine, and other things in the tobacco is remooved. Think about it like a tea bag. You never re-use a tea bag because it looses all the flavor. Also shisha has a non harmful chemical that makes a big cloud of smoke. So almost all the smoke you see is that chemical. So really the actual tobacco in shisha is for flavor.

[ECSTASY]

1 hookah = 100 ciggies
but hookah has less nicotine so its a lil bit safer than ciggy

[Chromatic]

Shisha is boild tobacco with flavor. So when its boild most of the tar, nicotine, and other things in the tobacco is remooved. Think about it like a tea bag. You never re-use a tea bag because it looses all the flavor. Also shisha has a non harmful chemical that makes a big cloud of smoke. So almost all the smoke you see is that chemical. So really the actual tobacco in shisha is for flavor.

No, bro, it's tobacco with smell-good in it
Doing it occasionally wont hurt you unless you have really bad luck. And almost everyone smokes something at some point.

[nocontrol]

Ok, let's clear some things up here.
A Hookah (also called shisha, narguila etc.) is a waterpipe wich you use to smoke (mostly) tobacco.
The tobacco has a kind of glycerin on it, wich makes the thick smoke, and the flavour.
You can get it in pretty much any flavour you want.
One Hookah does NOT (!) equal 100 cigarettes.
The amount of smoke you inhale is equal to about 100 cigarettes, the other comparison is only used to scare kids away. One hookah a week is about 2 cigarettes a day, and one hookah a day is about 20.
Then you can buy nicotine free tobacco.
This is made of other plants and is made with the glycerin aswell, wich gives you the taste and the thick smoke.
The tobacco (or other) does not burn, it melts in a way. You also inhale fumes from the charcoal you place on top.
You can also buy "shiazo stones"
These are stones, wich are full of glycerin, and if you smoke these in a hookah, all that you're breathing in is the steam, so this is a lot safer.

Now to some of the things you guys said...

Neverender: Yes, unless you live at the nile, you do inhale the smoke, to get the big amounts of smoke taht you can only get with a hookah you need to inhale. A hookah is not a cigar

Ptice8888: No, the tar is not removed when the tobacco is "boiled". It says on the packages that the tobacco does not have any tar, but that is because the tar is in the smoke, wich is obviously full of stuff that wasn't in it before.
And no, the chemical you call non-harmful is of course harmful, you're inhaling smoke, that can't be good for you. And the tobacco in the hookah (the tobacco is called shisha) is only there for the nicotine, the clycerin for the flavour.

Ecstasy: I kind of already mentioned that BUT, you can't say that the nicotine is unhealthy, because it isn't. The unhealthy thing about smoking is the tar and the chemicals, those are the things that cause cancer. Nicotine is "only" addicting.

Chromatic: If you mean hurt in a painful way, you're right, if you do it right it won't hurt. If you mean in a healthy way, every time will harm your body a tiny bit more.
(and yes, everybody smokes at some point :P)

It's definatly worth trying, google it to find out more

Hope this helped