Background:
Hookah smoking is a traditional smoking in rural areas of India. But these days the hookah / pipe has entered urban metropolitan cities & is seen in restaurants & hotels with the hidden name of herbal hookah. Hookah owners claim that the hookah material does not contain tobacco or nicotine to get away from the clutches of legal provisions of cigarette & other tobacco control act. This is actually a new strategy of tobacco industry to remain in market & attract younger generation including females.

Methods:
Multiple raids conducted in different areas & samples of hookah materials collected for analysis even though all the samples were claimed to be herbal & herbal samples were shown to us during raids. The restaurant / hotel owners were challaned under section 4 for smoking in public places. The duly sealed samples sent to Govt of India labs for analysis for presence of tobacco / nicotine/ other hazardous chemicals. The samples tested at designated tobacco testing laboratory.

Results:
Out of 18 samples , 3 could not be tested in view of insufficient quantity. Out of rest 15 samples all contained significant quantity of nicotine though all were claimed to be herbal. This clarifies that the restaurants / hotels are adding nicotine also inside the herbal samples in hidden manner with /without informing the customer.

Conclusions:
It proves that most of the hookah smoking samples also contain nicotine though claimed to be herbal & are violations of Tobacco control act. It is difficult to conduct raids again & again & pick up samples for analysis. Therefore Govt should ban all kinds of hookah smoking to protect youth from the menace of tobaccos