"For $10 you pick your flavored tobacco. Mohamed Ali, owner, then picks and packs the pipe and readies the charcoal. Then it's time to smoke."These furrin-like goin's on have raised the eyebrows of some state legislators, who are convinced something underhanded must be going on here, and are reduced in the extremity of their need to do something to gibbering thusly:
"They use fruit flavored tobacco and do deliver nicotine probably breaking the blood brain barrier faster than traditional modes of nicotine delivery and we discovered that because of how they're made.. In essence they're bongs. They don't fall under the definition of cigarettes in the code," said Iowa Legislator Kevin McCarthy.The horror! Someone's discovered an unregulated activity!
It means hookah bars like this one are not part of a state wide sales to minors enforcement scheme. Police conduct sting operations at least once a year on businesses that sell cigarettes. Hookah bars could slip under the radar as things stand now. But McCarthy is pushing for change.The proprietor seems unfazed by all the legislative angst he is inspiring.
"A new permitting system for all tobacco products and that would cover the hookah situation subjecting them to the sales to minor enforcement scheme that everyone else has to," McCarthy said.
Mohamed says he's done everything the state has asked him to do. A tobacco distributor permit and a sign warning minors to steer clear hang on his wall. He even has a no smoking section to stay in compliance with the laws.A no-smoking section, eh? Well, best of luck, Mohamed. If they're smoking in your shop, they're not smoking where I am, so I wish you success.
Yo, Iowa. 'Member when you were bummed cuz all them so-fisti-cates on the coasts laughed at you for being a buncha cow-tipping rubes? 'Member how you had to bribe your young people to stay in Iowa rather than make for greener pastures? This article ain't helping any.
If you haven't seen a hookah before now, it will definitely get your attention as it's turning a lot of heads...It looks like any other store from the street.. But inside is an eye opener...But the smoke coming out of these pipes is creating a fire with at least one Iowa lawmaker. He hopes it doesn't become a tradition here.
Gooo-ooo-ooolly!
They use fruit flavored tobacco and do deliver nicotine probably breaking the blood brain barrier faster than traditional modes of nicotine delivery and we discovered that because of how they're made.. In essence they're bongs.
Sounds like you'd know more about that than I would, dude.
Posted by: Angie Schultz on February 14, 2005 02:31 PM
For what it's worth, I picked up my cow-tipping skills in my native Florida.
What I don't understand is why this guy's getting bent about flavored tobacco while local supermarkets have been selling noxious flavored coffee beans with impunity for years. (Now if polluting public coffee grinders, used by innocent real coffee lovers, with that foulness isn't something crying out to be legislated against...)
Posted by: Moira on February 14, 2005 03:07 PM
Sing it, sister! When I lived in California, I had to stop going to Gloria Jeans because, among other things, everything they sold there had a strange vanilla-rum-hazelnut aftertaste -- and I didn't even let them grind my beans. I ground them at home. This forced me to fall back on Peet's and Starbucks -- which both roast their beans to within microns of their little lives, which no doubt fills them with carcinogens -- causing me to develop a taste exclusively for dark-roasted coffee and thereby probably sending me to an early grave.
I should sue.
Posted by: Angie Schultz on February 14, 2005 04:16 PM
Well, you know what smoking fruit-flavored tobacco leads to. Yes: drinking beer.
Posted by: Andrea Harris on February 17, 2005 10:16 AM