Any student who experiences any semblance of a typical college life has been around hookah. Whether it be at a party, small get-together, hookah bar, lost in the woods or a baby shower, college students can't seem to avoid it, and it's only getting more popular. Meanwhile, cigarette smoking gets the brunt of the liberal undergraduate backlash. Regular smokers are relegated to confined outdoor areas like foul-smelling animals in a petting zoo; hookah makes tobacco sexy again. With its fruity flavors and pipes that look straight out of a Middle Eastern adventure, smoking hookah with friends instantly makes you both social and cultured.

Unfortunately, people don't realize that hookah is just as bad as cigarettes, and in most cases worse because smoking sessions typically last a few hours and not a few minutes. Hookah smoking has been linked to the same cancers prevalent in cigarette smokers such as lung, bladder and oral cancers. Combine that with the added risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from the charcoal and herpes and other oral diseases carried in saliva, both the passing of the tube and smoking hookah can clearly impact one's health.

Due to the lack of awareness and ever-increasing popularity, universities, cities and states are starting to limit the availability of hookah. Lawmakers in Boston, California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and Oregon are trying to ban hookah bars altogether, and an increasing number of universities are banning the use on campus. However, these lawmakers and universities are tackling the wrong problem.

Cigarettes used to be the cool thing to do. As the years passed, people found themselves unable to ignore the mounds of evidence showing their harmfulness. Now, smokers are demonized much more than they used to be.

The issue with hookah is that people are simply uninformed on just how harmful it is. The way to get people to stop isn't through legislation. Legislation will only increase the allure of hookah.

If speakeasies and marijuana have taught us anything, it's that once a substance becomes illegal, it joins the ranks of rebellion and only becomes cooler—especially when that substance has such a small, immediate downside as opposed to harder drugs. Instead, people need to be presented with enough information to demonize it themselves. Legislation only stands to make this seem like another case of "us against them" and "the old and out of touch versus the youth."

The state legislation would only oppose hookah bars and not the actual sale of hookah. But this should be different from cigarette regulations. In a restaurant that allows smokers and non smokers, there is the issue of second-hand smoke. Anyone who goes to a hookah bar knows there is no other purpose for being there. This sort of regulation would be meaningless and not protect anyone outside of the group of people who have already chosen to harm themselves with the substance. The only difference is that the substance will be consumed in private without the benefit of commerce for the state.

My argument isn't akin to a libertarian believing that an individual should be allowed to do whatever they want to themselves regardless of the harm. I don't believe in that extreme. However, in this case, the government and universities do not have the right to tell people that they cannot use hookah.

Bringing hookah into a neighborhood or a campus doesn't have the ability to tear that campus apart. It doesn't destroy families or relationships. It has no black market value. And the physical harm is contained to the self. Secondhand smoke is dangerous, but if you don't want to be around hookah, you can leave. No one is forced to go into a hookah bar or to a party with hookah. Is hookah a stupid choice? Unless you're Middle Eastern or of Middle Eastern decent and smoking it out of cultural tradition, sure. But college can be as much about stupid choices as it is intelligent ones. These are the "get it out of your system" years for a reason.

Except for countries or cultures in which hookah is a valued tradition, hookah is most popular amongst undergraduates from the ages of late teens to early 20s. Unlike cigarettes, hookah is a fad. Sure it's worse than cigarettes, but chances are you'll only smoke it for this small portion of your life. Cigarettes tend to be more of a lifelong endeavor. In the interest of full disclosure, I neither smoke nor enjoy cigarettes or hookah, but I would strongly oppose banning one and not the other. It's one thing to oppose tobacco altogether, it's another to nitpick.

Rules banning hookah in dorms and public places on campus make sense, but as long as people adhere to those rules, they should be allowed to use hookah. Governments and universities should have more important issues to deal with. If they really want to make a difference, they'll inform the people, not oppose them.