Hookah health news from your very own galaxy

It’s sneaky. In the same way Philip Morris marketed cigarettes equating smoking its brand with the rugged Wild West individualism of the Marlboro Man (the cigs became the world’s bestselling), it looks like the popularity of the “Star Wars” franchise has — maybe through the law of unintended consequences — helped make hookah smoking the new cool for youngsters and young adults.

At the time of the first “Star Wars” film in 1977, hookah smoking was limited to some enduring hippies and a few Middle Eastern aficionados. But then along came Jabba the Hutt with his always-by-his-side hookah, and the spark was lit.

Here’s how one “Star Wars” superfan described his early experience with Jabba’s hookah: “When the ‘Return of the Jedi’ action figures came out in 1983, Jabba’s playset included his own little plastic hookah, and I remember going over to play with it at my friend’s house, sticking the end of the hose in the little hole in Jabba’s mouth. Being 4 years old, I had no clue as to what this was ... [But] it was common for Jabba and other Hutts to gather around their huge bulbous narghiles [hookahs] and relax. Is it possible that the Hutts were the originators of the modern hookah parlor? Little did I know I would be in the hookah business 25 years later.”

Today hookah (narghile, shisha, water-pipe) smoking is a global tobacco epidemic causing world-wide degradation of lung function. Consider these facts:

❚ Even though cigarette use is declining, partially due to smoke-free workplace laws, consumer awareness and higher taxes, hookah bars that rent water pipes and sell flavored tobacco mixtures are gaining in popularity and remain largely unregulated.

❚ Many hookah users believe the practice is less harmful than cigarettes, yet according to the American Lung Association, a single daily water-pipe use is the same as smoking 10 cigarettes. Hookah smoking sessions lasting 4560 minutes are equal to smoking between 40 and 400 cigarettes.

❚ A new study in the journal Tobacco Control points out that while smoking one cigarette involves around 10 puffs, each delivering about 50 milliliters of smoke, one 45-60 minute hookah session may add up to 100 inhalations, and each one delivers about 500 milliliters of smoke.

❚ Besides triggering bodywide inflammation, hookah use is associated with the spread of infections such as herpes and HPV from several smokers using a single mouthpiece.

The American Lung Association believes, as do we, that hookah smoking is a growing public health threat and that efforts should be made to restrict its use, especially among teens and young adults:

Before you hookah, remember, Darrell Winfield, the Marlboro Man from the mid-1970s, died of lung cancer in 2015, while other Marlboro men died of emphysema and COPD.