Claim bar owners trying to create a smokescreen around the potential health hazards from smoking hookah
Hookah bar owners of the western part of the city, on Thursday, opposed the city police's move to close down their business before a bench of the Gujarat high court on the ground that smoking hookah is not as injurious to health as smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco, eating chocolates and even tea and coffee.
A bench consisting of Chief Justice SJ Mukhopadhya and Justice JB Pardiwala was hearing a petition filed by ten prominent hookah bar owners from the western part of Ahmedabad against the city police's move to close down their businesses. The police raided the bars a couple of weeks ago and asked the owners to shut down on the grounds that hookah bars, among other things, are spoiling youngsters' lives.
After the hearing on Thursday, the bench issued notices to the state government and Ahmedabad city police commissioner and refused to grant any interim relief while posting the case till August 17. Yatin Oza and Roma Fidelis, counsels for the hookah bar owners, filed an affidavit before the court mentioning products and ingredients used in hookahs.
The affidavit states, "Hookah smoke is mainly made of water and glycerol and it has far less concentrated chemicals than cigarette smoke." The affidavit also mentioned details about various products containing nicotine. It stated, "A filter cigarette contains on the average 14.5 milligram and an unfiltered one 15.6 mg of nicotine. In bidis it is 26.9 mg and 3.4 mg in chewing tobacco. Hookah smoking has only 0.005 mg nicotine."
The affidavit also mentioned a survey report of the faculty of medicine, University of New South Wales of Sydney in Australia which states, "A cup of tea contains 100 to 300 mg of caffeine, whereas in espresso coffee it is 90 mg and a chocolate bar contains 20-60 mg.
Oza argued before the court that products used in hookahs do not contain much amount of nicotine or caffeine and are thus not injurious to health. He added that all these products are openly available in the market without any licence while hookah bar owners are being restricted under a harsh law.
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