Everything You Need to Know About E-Cigarettes, Vaping, and Hookahs

Designed to help viewers make informed decisions about smoking products, this concise guidance program combines factual information from the hosts with interviews of users, backed by detailed diagrams. Although various new products are currently advertised as “safe” alternatives to cigarettes, Everything You Need to Know attacks that myth, starting off with a look at the hookah, a popular option for high school and college students that originated hundreds of years ago in the Middle East. While a participant giggles that although she knew cigarettes were bad, “no one's really ever told you not to smoke hookah,” the studies cited here state that a smoker inhales 100 times the smoke of a cigarette during an average hookah session (a visualization with a soda bottle is used to illustrate the difference in volume, while it is also noted that the water doesn't filter the smoke, which carries toxic chemicals). Examining the relatively new phenomenon of electronic cigarettes and vaping—both options heat liquids without burning smoke (and consumers are lured by the myriad of flavors and varieties)—the program points out these alternatives still carry addictive nicotine, and no long-term studies yet exist. Also touching on the shady similarities between current marketing and 1950s and ‘60s cigarette advertising (before the related health problems, including emphysema and lung cancer, were widely known), extras include a bonus segment on vaping marijuana and alcohol, as well as a PDF teacher's guide. Recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P. (J. Williams-Wood)