Vandpibekulturen blandt danske teenagere - Liv.dk

Summary
products onto the market in 2002 and two years later every other 16 to 20 y.o.
had tried the waterpipe. The key to this commercial success is of the same kind
as that in the Middle East, where the tobacco industry in the 1990’s developed a
new, sweetly tasting waterpipe tobacco, ’tabamel’, as a supplement to the original,
acrid variety, ’tumbak’. Especially women and young people in the Middle East
are tempted by this chemically produced waterpipe tobacco. This same tendency,
especially among the very young, rapidly manifested itself in Denmark, aided, in
no small measure, by the willingness of retailers to sell the product.
Waterpipe smoking in Denmark, however, has not become a fixture of everyday
life in the way it is in the Middle East, where it is more widespread and a visible
part of the street scene. Crucial in this respect are the ’waterpipe cafés’,
which offer services organized around waterpipe smoking and which are visible
establishments in the social organization of the Arabic-Islamic urban society.
The limited number of waterpipe cafés that have opened in Denmark will never
be so crucial to the local waterpipe culture; especially not when one factor is
the increasing numbers of restrictions on smoking that are being introduced. In
Denmark the waterpipe has not experienced the kind of public denigration that
the cigarette has, however, and if this does not happen it can very well become
an entrenched part of the phases of tobacco experimentation among children
and young people, in which case it can no longer be considered as just a passing
fad. The potential integration of the waterpipe into the everyday life of Danish
teenagers is not connected to its visibility in the street scene, nor to the number
of waterpipe cafés as in the Middle East. For teenagers in Denmark, the crucial
factor is that the waterpipe and waterpipe tobacco products are available to them
on an everyday basis, through the combination of the number of shops selling
the products, the number of friends in their social circle who owns a waterpipe,
that they are allowed to smoke in the home and at parties, etc.
When one consider solely why Danish teenagers try that first puff on a waterpipe,
the report points to this high level of accessability, but also to the level of
social acceptance of the waterpipe among parents. Generally, the level of acceptance
of the waterpipe is much greater than that for cigarettes, which means
that parents set down ’looser’ rules and boundaries about waterpipe smoking
than they do about cigarette smoking. Several respondents mention examples of
friends who have been given a waterpipe as a birthday present by their parents
and also parents who allow ’waterpipe-cosines’ in their teenagers’ rooms. These
episodes are to a large extent due to the myths about the harmless nature of waterpipe
smoke, myths also prevalent among the young people themselves.
Children and youngsters, who try the waterpipe for the first time, experience a
sweet and cool smoke which tastes and smells pleasant and which does not irritate
the throat. This is the exact opposite of most people’s first experience of cigarette
smoke, which is hot, irritates the throat and does not taste pleasant at all.
71