I am not normally against the antismoking movement. As a nonsmoker who chooses not to care if other people smoke, my attitude toward both the anti-smoking and pro-smoking movements has been listless at best. I tend to keep an eye out, however, when I think my freedoms are being infringed upon.
One such infringement: Hookah lounges in Oregon are facing the possibility of losing their primary business function. The recent growth of hookah popularity has health officials up in arms about this newest craze among young adults, and a new bill before the Oregon House seeks to end it.
House Bill 2726, a bill to tighten the loophole within the smoke shop exemption of the 2009 Smokefree Workplace Law, had its first public hearing Feb. 25 in Salem. If passed, it would require smoke shops to have a maximum seating capacity of four and would allow in-store smoking “only for the purpose of sampling tobacco products for making retail purchase decisions.” This bill would effectively outlaw hookah lounges.
Such a bill would, according to Oregon health officials, help to stop the rise in hookah smoking among young adults.
For hookah lounge owners such as Shady Yasin, this bill is a business-killer. Yasin owns the largest hookah lounge in the Northwest, Narah Hookah in Gresham. He opened a Eugene branch last September, and is awaiting the outcome of HB 2726.
When creating his business, Yasin did not have poisoning Oregon’s youth in mind.
“It’s a positive, safe environment,” Yasin said. “It has the right energy and no negative people. It beats going to a movie.”
Yasin wanted to make a fun hangout for age-appropriate students to study, talk and, primarily, smoke hookah.
The recent growing concerns over retail hookah smoking, and the current legislation attempting to rectify it, is a prime example of only-slightly disguised ageism. At the age of 18, American adults are allowed the freedom to smoke. HB 2726 is an attempt to infringe on that freedom because more and more young adults are exercising it.
While not a smoker myself, I am aware that I have the freedom to do so, and I appreciate the law recognizing that I am responsible enough to make that decision for myself. This bill is masquerading as an extension of another law meant to protect Oregon’s employees, but was proposed with the idea of limiting the choices young adults are able to make. The fact that more young adults smoke hookah should not constitute the means to ban hookah lounges altogether, as no laws are being broken.
The viewpoint driving this bill is that hookah smokers in Oregon, a group of primarily 18- to 25-year-olds, should not be free to smoke in lounges meant for them.
A primary source for the advocacy of HB 2726 is a study conducted by the Oregon Tobacco Prevention and Education Program in November 2010. It shows that not only has the number of hookah lounges in Oregon increased exponentially over the last several years, but so have the number of young adults smoking hookah. The study concluded that hookah lounges “create both supply and demand for hookah smoking by glamorizing and normalizing the product.”
“Glamorizing and normalizing” is not against the law if the product is legal — it’s advertising. The concept that young adults are responsible enough to smoke but not responsible enough to resist advertising highlights the double standard placed on us. Reasons behind the bill are not only that more and more college-age students are smoking hookah, but also that hookah lounges are “luring” them in with suggestive flavors like “Epic Smoke” and “Sex on the Beach.” But the hookah industry, for the most part, does not have evil intentions. It does not want to poison Oregon’s legal-aged youth. It wants to turn a profit by providing a popular and legal service. It is a business that should not receive discrimination simply because of the age group to which it caters.
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Blogger: Hookah bar legislation unfairly targets Oregon youth
Daily Emerald
April 17, 2011
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