Smoking: The 411

WARNING: Tobacco is addictive! Remember when your grandpa was sitting on the veranda smoking his pipe? Remember how nice the smoke smelt and how you just wanted to try it out?

Remember that horrible taste in your mouth when you sneaked in a puff when he wasn’t looking? Well, I hope you remember that taste.

The smoking culture has been around for thousands of years, is a problem that the world has been dealing with for generations and simple refuses go away. It has been causing concerns to the health of many, but has just been picking up steam instead of slowing down. Young people are facing the same temptations as their parents might have faced growing up, with cannabis (marijuana/dagga) also posing a major problem for the youth.

Smoking has gone through several transformations and different traditions and cultures have been associated with it since ancient times, let’s take a look.

Tobacco had already been very popular in North and South America and had been long in use before the Europeans arrived and made tobacco known to Europe. Tobacco which is hallucinogenic when smoked in large amounts, was not only smoked for relaxation by Native Americans, but also as part of religious practices.

It was a popular belief that tobacco was gift from the Creator and that the smoke could carry prayers to heaven. Apart from smoking, tobacco was used for medicinal purposes, mixed with different herbs to cure different ailments. Indigenous tribes of the Americas still use tobacco in religion today and frown upon reckless smoking such as chain smoking.

Cannabis, also known as marijuana or dagga, is a preparation of the cannabis plant to be used for medicinal reasons or as a drug. This drug has been used to cause euphoric affects dating back to ancient times. Its use in Chinese medicine dates back to 2737 BC. It then spread to India, North Africa and later to Europe.

In writings of the Chinese emperor Shen Nung, he mentions the qualities of the drug for medication for rheumatism, gout, malaria and absent-mindedness. Its medicinal value outweighed its intoxicating properties. Similarly to tobacco, cannabis is also used for entheogenic purposes in many tribes around the world.

It should be kept in mind that there are several negative effects of smoking marijuana. Marijuana is addictive and causes harmful effects. Immediate effects of marijuana abuse can include distortions of time and space perceptions, impaired coordination and could lead to risk of traffic accidents. Abusers of marijuana were found to suffer socially, at work where their career status takes a dive and in cognitive ability.

Over the years, different machanisms have been created and customised to the pleasure of smokers around the world. Cigarettes are maybe the most famous, being distributed all over the world, and virtually anyone can have access to them despite regulatory laws. Besides the cigarette, other devices used to smoke include the cigar, pipe or the water pipe, known as a hookah or hubbly bubbly.

The pipe is the most traditional form of smoking tobacco, also finding its origin in native American culture. The hookah, however, finds its origin in Persia from where it eventually spread to India and later to the rest of the world.

Smoking the hookah has gained popularity in North and South America, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, Tanzania and South Africa, largely due to immigrants from the Middle East. In Namibia, where the water pipe is commonly referred to as a hubbly bubbly, more and more youth resort to smoking it rather than cigarettes, but the negative effects are the same or even worse.

Smoking hubbly exposes smokers to toxic chemicals that are not filtered out by the water and risk of infectious illness when pipes are passed around. Hubbly smoke also contains more carbon monoxide than cigarettes and expose non-smokers to more second-hand smoke.

Several countries around the world, including Namibia, have started printing gruesome images of the negative effects of smoking such as rotten teeth, tar-filled lungs and images of young children that suffer from second hand smoke on packaging. These images might have hit home for some, but there isn’t any proof that they actually help smokers quit.

“I think it has an effect on people who have been smoking for a long time,” a Polytechnic of Namibia student, Marvin Uirab, said. However, a source who chose not to be named said he doesn’t think the images are effective, they were just a bit disturbing at first.

Quitting smoking provides many long term benefits and reduces the risk of smoke-related diseases such as lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, heart attacks and poor blood circulation, which could lead to amputation. However, it would be best to never start at all.