Visitors In Manchester - Shisha Smoking

Shisha means jar

The origin of shisha smoking is uncertain, debatable and people arguably talk about this mainly in the Middle East when they smoke a few shisha heads in shisha lounges. Many nations are claiming the invention like Turkey, India, Syria and Iran among others. One of the stories is a Doctor in India around the year 1500 BC raised health concerns after smoking tobacco became popular among Indian noblemen. He invented a system which allowed the tobacco smoke to pass through water to be purified. That is what he thought then, and still, many shisha users believe today that the practice of smoking shisha is safe. This new device for smoking later became a status symbol for the Indian aristocracy and gentry.

Most popular shisha smoking nowadays is the mixer of tobacco and fruit, fruit flavoured tobacco that attracts new users and future smokers and addicts to the habit that increases the club number of smokers, which makes it more dangerous as people think or told they are smoking fruit.

What is the origin of smoking fruit flavoured tobacco or fruit and tabacco mix? The story is that a ship heading to a town near Aden had a cargo of dry fruits and tobaccos on board, and that ship hit a big rock, and it sank as it was trying to dock. People from the town where the vessel sank collected whatever they could find from the ship wreckage and salvage from the ship cargo including the tobacco and the dry fruits. They also raised to the shore the fruit and the tobacco mix to the coast and dried it. The locals used the dried mix for their shishas (waste not, want not) and to their surprise, the newfound recipe was a pleasant one to smoke, and here a new method for smoking shisha started, which, caught up as a good recipe for the shisha heads in the other towns and countries since then.

The shisha ingredients are not just fruit but fruit and plenty of tobacco, fruit alone won't work or produce smoke to inhale. The shisha ingredients are either tobacco alone or a mixer of tobacco and fruit. The amount of concentrate on smoking is higher than smoking cigarettes. The question here is Why shisha is acceptable to فsmoke without warning like the ones we see on the cigarettes packs? And, Why smoking shisha inside the buildings ( premises ) allowed while cigarettes are not allowed? Places that permit people to smoke cigarettes inside usually penalised and subject to financial fine or closure. Shisha smoking danger has not been published intensively as cigarette smoking. Shisha smoking is associated with the same risks as cigarette smoking and more. The smoke that emerges from a shisha head contains numerous toxicants. Such as carbon monoxide and heavy metals, known to cause cancers of the mouth, lung, stomach, bladder, and oesophagus as well as heart disease and other diseases.

Furthermore, due to the mode of smoking – including frequency of puffing, depth of inhalation, and length of the smoking session – shisha smokers may absorb higher concentrations of the toxins found in cigarette smoke as a typical one-hour shisha smoking session is the equivalent of inhaling the smoke of 10s of cigarettes. Also, people usually smoke as much as they can within the time they spend in shisha lounges as they usually invested a good amount of money on smoking shisha. These risks are largely unknown and unappreciated by the public, and the majority of frequent users are more likely to believe that shisha is less harmful than cigarettes. Also, to the consequences of smoking tobacco, Shisha smoking also poses unique health risks. Because smoking sessions at shisha lounges often involve sharing the same ahead of shisha among multiple individuals, consumers are at increased risk of infectious diseases, such as influenza, herpes, hepatitis, and tuberculosis.

Additionally, the charcoal used to heat the tobacco in the shisha exposes consumers to high levels of carbon monoxide, heavy metals, and cancer-causing chemicals. We are not going in details on how harmful is smoking shisha, which you called it the sweet poison and describe it as poison wrapped in honey and fruits. One can find all about the danger of shisha smoking by searching the internet and it is obvious. But we are surprised how the authorities who give licences to open shisha lunges and bar do not realise this danger and before it spread more and more.

There is another negative impact of shisha smoking which going to hit the community in the future as the authorities who issue licences for opening shisha lounges most probably not thought of the implications for NHS in the future. One should not look and think of the present, but of the future as if we do not consider the future in our decisions we might not control the destiny. To give licences for shisha smoking is a short-term benefit for a few people but it will be long-term suffering for people who have been introduced to this heavy smoking habit. Also, it will be a burden on the community and NHS, especially now all people and politicians talk about how NHS is struggling with the budget and the resources, and certainly we shouldn't help to make it worse by introducing a new source of diseases.

Thanks to a few members of Manchester City Council who we have learnt from that you do not need a licence to add shisha smoking facility to the business. We were surprised if not shocked to hear that, one can open a shisha smoking business without planning permission or a licence Despite the health and fire hazards shisha smoking may cause.

We have kept above paragraph just to see how many people expecting business to have a licence to open the shisha smoking business.

We also like to add that Manchester City Council is working very hard to inspect and ban any shisha smoking business that violet indoor smoking and other violations. Although, there are no specific regulations required or planning permission and obtaining a licence to open the shish smoking business and that makes their job very hard.

Finally, When we talk about the harm and suffering to the young people in the future, we should not forget the young people working in the shisha lounges and probably on minimum wages to serve the shisha smokers. Their job is to provide the costumes with a good shisha and keeping it active, running and in good shape all the time by changing the charcoals and inhaling the shisha strongly till it is ready to be used by the customers.

" If you have been to one of these shishas places you probably have noticed that the worker(s) job is to set the shisha for the costumes by inhaling the shisha deeply for a while to give it a good start. Then they provide fresh charcoal and clean the shisha head when needed during the shisha smoking session for all the customers ( by taking the head out of the shisha set and blow in it from the bottom to clear the holes of the shisha head) then place fresh charcoal and restart it by inhaling deeply to keep the customers happy. The customers also usually provided with a little plastic pipe tip attachment to inhale through the mouthpiece to protect them from the transfer of the disease and infection by sharing and sucking the smoke pipe mouthpiece; the workers are not provided with this attachment either. "

These young people working in the shisha lounges are they going to be protected against any harm they will have in the future through working in this dangerous and not healthy environment and who is going to pay for their treatment the taxpayers or the owners of the shisha places by sort of extended health insurance?

Notes :

Some Shisha places have outside areas for shisha smoking but with Manchester weather these places are covered, which make the smoke moves horizontally passing everyone on the way to inhale. So It makes no difference if you have the shisha smoking place inside or outside the building the effect will be more or less the same !!!!!

Some countries which are considered by the UK and Europe, as less advanced and less caring about their people are taken better measures to stop shisha smoking. From preventing it all together to allowing shisha smoking lunges to open outside the city centre, and shisha smokers have to travel to them to smoke and save others from seeing them and trying them, which is the same principle as covering the cigarettes in the supper markets now. Cigarets are covered and the only smokers can ask for them to buy but not on display to be seen by other all the time and might encourage them to smoke.

Most users usually start at a young age 17 to 20, that is why Shisha places popular near the universities as this phenomenon consider trendy and cool.

Without the Shisha regulation enforcement, are we going to see the 2nd phase of shisha marketing, shisha home delivery that started in Beruit around the year 2000?

visitorsinmanchester.com is pioneering an appeal to the authorities that issuing licences to open shisha lounges and bars and hopefully, the appeal will have the support of the newspapers in Manchester and the other 9 boroughs to be heard by the issuing authorities and the people in the communities. We are starting by conducting a survey to measure the people's representative ( The Councilors in the boroughs ) awareness of the danger and the future impact of the shisha smoking on the communities and the people in the area. The Councilors will be asked

The appeal will be updated to ban the shisha smoking in public and hope we will have the support.

1 - Do they think Shisha smoking can cause severe danger to the smokers and would have a negative impact on the NHS in the future.

2 - Do they support an appeal to stop the issue of licences to open Shisha lounges and bars ( No Licence is required )

3- Do they support Greater Manchester pioneering a campaign to stop Shisha smoking in public places.

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We have received very interesting replies from a few Councillors and here some :

One Councillor highlighted to us about the 5th of December debate in the parliament on regulating shisha smoking, which we found it excellent and a very interesting debate. We recommend reading it.

The debate was requested by Sabina Mahmood, MP asking to regulate the shisha smoking in the UK. The debates as we understand was triggered by social issues like noises, shisha smokers taking residents parking spaces and unaccepted social activities that started after the opening of the shisha lounges and bars in one area. These issues are of course of great concern to the residents in the area and The MP Sabina Mahmood took the initiative to work on introducing the regulations and of obtaining licences to open and run shisha smoking facility. Now one can extend business by adding shisha smoking facility without any consideration for health and fire risks, which is needed to be dealt with in addition to the social issues mentioned in the debate,

However, visitorsinmanchester.com has initiated an appeal and hoping to work with anyone interested to have the shisha smoking banned in public places for two reasons the 1st is the health risk to the people attracted to shisha bars and lounges, which will add additional source of illness to the NHS and further drain the resources in not very far future and the 2nd is the workers who provide the shishas to the customers and we think it is inappropriate if not cruel to have people working in this environment as we have explained. In addition of course, to what we have been mentioned in the debate is the social issues associated with shisha smoking in public. As we have mentioned in this site, some countries, what we call them less fortunate in Europe, have banned opening shisha smoking in the cities and town and one has to travel at least 10 miles on the motorway to find shisha smoking lounge.

“Please note we only objecting smoking shisha in public places and we believe that people are free to do what they like as long as what they do do not affect others in any sense, especially health .”

The debate also mentioned some point that we are not happy with or the people participated in the debate happy with, but we not,

We understand from the debate, that it is good for people who not drinking alcoholic drink by choice or religious reason to find shisha places to go instead of going to the bars where people drink alcohol.

We in visitorsinmanchester.com don’t feel happy that people who don't drink alcohol can go to shisha bars to spend the time and socialise, especially every time they invite a new friend he/she will be introduced to smoking.

In addition, it is not good ingredients to spend the night smoking the equivalent of 200 cigarets/hour, consume high calory sweets and may add to it a milkshake, which was mentioned in the debate, has the equivalent calories of 3 days diet. We rather see them go to ordinary bars and have a soft drink and socialise than going to shisha bars. No one in a bar will say sorry we don’t serve you if you order orange juice, Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola.

Also, we don’t feel happy to accept that people who don't drink are segregated from mainstream people, especially Muslims. There are enough segregations already, and we don’t want smoking shisha outings to add to it. We think whenever it is possible, none alcohol drinkers and alcohol drinkers should go together be it from work or where they live to drink or to eat and socialise. Again they don’t need to have alcohol. We have seen Muslims, none alcohol drinkers, go with their alcohol drinker friends without problems, but we must admit not many and that is probably because we do not know many Muslim friends who don’t drink. What we are trying to say, it is possible for alcohol drinkers and none alcohol drinkers to go out together, and they enjoy their outing, probably the none alcohol drinkers enjoy it more !!!! seeing their friends very merry.

We must add that people that don't drink alcohol are very popular with their alcohol drinker friends as they can drive when they go out and saving the bother of transport arrangement, especially when they go to more than one place. I remember a Muslim none alcohol drinker was very popular in the university hall of residence when we used to go out at night to bars and clubs and he used to take whoever comes or arrange it with him first to go to town, and when the 3 or 4 spare places he has in his car gone they gone.

We have sent emails to the MPs participated in the 5th of December debate in the parliament on regulating shisha smoking about our appeal to ban shisha smoking in public and

To Support that the Parliament should work on banning shisha smoking altogether,

If it is not for the sake of the young people who are attracted to the shisha places because of their availability.

If it is not for the sake of the workers who work in unhealthy conditions to provide the shisha to the customers.

to support banning the shisha in public places so the future governments not to give money to the NHS to deal with the diseases caused by shisha smoking. Please do it for the sake of NHS.

We are going to show you how many of the MPs support the ban as per the email we have sent, which is part of our campaign to ban shisha smoking in public.

We have this highlighted from a few Councillors :

” the average shisha-smoking session lasts about an hour and research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) reveals that 1 hour of shisha smoking can be as damaging as 100-200 cigarettes, perception that shisha smoking is not addictive because the water used in the pipe can absorb nicotine is incorrect since in reality only SOME of the nicotine is absorbed by the water so smokers are still exposed to enough nicotine to cause an addiction and so shisha is playing a role in encouraging people to take up cigarette smoking and fruit and herbal flavoured shisha still usually contain tobacco so again the perception that it is healthier is wrong. Even if you use tobacco-free shisha you are still at risk from the carbon monoxide and any carcinogenic toxins generated by the coal or charcoal used to burn the shisha. “

Thanks, Councillors for bring this

World Health Organisation (WHO) reveals that 1 hour of shisha smoking can be as damaging as 100-200 cigarettes,

When we read this before the Councillors sent it to us, we thought it can not be true !! Why no one has done anything about shisha smoking if this is true. Why we have shisha smoking places all over the places.

We have on our site this :

" a typical one-hour shisha smoking session is the equivalent of inhaling the smoke of 10s of cigarettes. "

Which is true and without the shocking and horrifying figure of 100 to 200 cigarettes also, we didn’t want to look like scaremongering people to make them believe in what we say!!. The question is these figures are available and it must have been seen by the government or anyone responsible, why they haven’t done anything about it. We have seen the government spending a lot of money to educate people not to smoke ( if the adverts we see on TV are government ads ) while the beast, the mother of all smoke harming, is coming and they do nothing about it, Why we wait till the problem is too big to start solving it.

1 hour of shisha smoking can be as damaging as 100-200 cigarettes, Does The Government or the responsible authority needs to know any more information to ban shisha smoking altogether.

One Councillor feedback was :

" Government needs to give licensing powers over Shisha bars to Local Authorities. Therefore we would support any appeals to stop any shisha bars from opening. "

We completely agree with The Councillor The Government needs to regulate and give the licensing to Local Authorities. After all the Local Authorities who deal with all the issues of shisha smoking and face the problems related to them, not The Government.

Please write to us if you do not agree with what we say or if you have any comment.

Please come back to see the update soon.

Please note this page going to be restructured after receiving the comments, please accept the page as it is, for now. At least it shows that we are transparent.

Update February 14, Happy Valentine's Day To Everyone

We have received replies from some Councillors in Greater Manchester, not many. Very a few but interesting and useful responses that open our eyes, as people say, to things we didn’t know. At least this time is much better than when contact them in April last year regarding the issue of women rights only two replies received as per the following link https://visitorsin.com/index.php/women-rights

However, we haven’t received any reply to the email in this link https://visitorsin.com/index.php/mps-email2 sent to MPs participated in the shisha smoking debate on January 31, not a single response.
Thanks to the councillors who sent the replies. For the councillors who didn't reply and also for the MPs participated in the debate, we say that we understand the concern and you are busy, and it is maybe for different reasons and we have to follow a different path.

Our original intention was to appeal to Greater Manchester local councillors and hence appealing to the councils to stop issuing shisha smoking lounges and ban shisha smoking in public and to contact Manchester Evening News and the local newspapers and ask them for support to our appeal and make people aware of the danger of the shisha smoking. Soon after we started we learnt that the local councils are not responsible for the issue of the licences and in fact, shisha smoking lounges do not need a licence to open shisha lounge/bar as there are no regulations from the central government / the parliament as we have learnt from the shisha smoking debate. The no regulation of the shisha smoking in public has victimised the local governments and sometimes it is a liability on the councils to see shisha smoking opening without regulation.

Thus as we found out that this issue is a national and not a local, we thought to send email to every MP to appeal to them to support banning shisha smoking in public in addition to the newspapers. But after the negative feedback and not receiving any response from MPs who participated in the debate and whom we thought they are interested in solving the shisha smoking problem, we thought it is not useful to extend it beyond the MPs involved in the discussion.

Instead, We decided we appeal to the parties whose MPs participated in the debate to see if the parties and the parties members and porters agree with the ban and that is if we can reach them by email or social media

The Newspapers - We hope they will join us for the interest of the people and we think politicians will hear them ( even without the hearing aids ) Our intention was and still after receiving the feedback to contact and lobby the newspapers for support and work on banning the shisha smoking in public and to start with Manchester Evening News.

We shall continue to update you on the subject. We know as long as we don't stop, it doesn't matter, even if we are slow in our quest we will get there.

In the meantime, We have a question here,

How many people in the community have suffered or going to suffer from shisha smoking diseases between the time that your MP heard about the danger of shisha smoking and the action taken to do anything about it? Please write to your MP, if you support the ban on shisha smoking in public places and appeal to them to support banning shisha smoking in public places. Our voice no matter how loud we try is not going to be heard, and that is why we want you, the public, and the newspapers involve.

However, we hope that the newspaper will not split in this issue according to whoever they support and for whatever reason(s), this is not Brexit to split people, this is public health and safety and the NHS.

Our aim to have public awareness day on the May 1st and of course we can not do it without your support, the newspapers and the media.

Update: Tweeted to the following regarding the ban of shisha smoking in public places but no comments to update you with

Let us try to make First Of May

Public Awareness Day Of The Danger Of Shisha Smoking In Public Places.