The Health Act 2006 will prohibit smoking in enclosed and substantially enclosed workplaces and public places. Within the Act, smoking refers to smoking tobacco or anything which contains tobacco, or smoking any other substance. The smokefree provisions within the Health Act will therefore apply to the use of waterpipes such as shisha and hookah.
Smoking of waterpipes was addressed in the regulatory impact assessment for smokefree legislation, the Department’s consultation on proposed smokefree regulations and was debated during the passage of the Health Bill through Parliament.
Representations on the health effects of smoking of waterpipes have referred to World Health Organisation (WHO) advice that using a waterpipe to smoke tobacco poses a serious potential health hazard to smokers and others exposed to the smoke emitted. The WHO advice states that second-hand smoke from waterpipes is a mixture of tobacco smoke in addition to smoke from the fuel, and therefore poses a serious health risk for non-smokers and recommends that waterpipes should be prohibited in public places consistent with bans on cigarette and other forms of tobacco smoking (World Health Organisation (2005) “Waterpipe Tobacco Smoke: Health effects, research needs and recommended actions by regulators.” WHO, Geneva).
In February 2007, the American Lung Association published advice titled “An emerging deadly trend: waterpipe tobacco use” which cited evidence that waterpipe use may increase exposure to carcinogens because smokers use a waterpipe over a much longer period of time, often 40 to 45 minutes, rather than the five to 10 minutes it takes to smoke a cigarette. Due to the longer, more sustained period of inhalation and exposure, a waterpipe smoker may inhale as much smoke as consuming 100 or more cigarettes during a single session. The American Lung Association report concluded that existing evidence on waterpipe smoking shows that it carries many of the same health risks and has been linked to many of the same diseases caused by cigarette smoking.
Copies of documents referred to are available in the Library.