The Ghana Health Service has said it will ban the smoking of Shisha (water pipe tobacco) and electronic cigarettes by the middle of this year.
 According to the Principal Research Officer of the GHS, Divine Darlington Logo, who spoke in an interview, a research conducted by the organization revealed that most Ghanaian youths have now adapted to the smoking of e-cigarettes and shisha, thus doing away with the smoking of traditional tobacco cigarettes.
The research revealed that the rate of smoking shisha and e-cigarettes among young people has shot up to 5.3 percent, higher than the traditional use of tobacco which stands at 2.8 percent.
He noted that the Ghana Health Service is working with the Health Ministry to ban the smoking of the shisha this year per its dangers to public health.
"All the effects of smoking are in shisha and electronic cigarettes, so FDA does not have that regulation right now to control shisha and that of electronic cigarettes," Mr Logo lamented.
Mr Logo added: "However, we working with the Ministry of Health now to ban shisha and electronic cigarettes now in Ghana, Shisha use is more harmful than cigarettes, one puff from that tube is equal to one full cigarette that you smoke.
"So it is more dangerous than the cigarette, so with that alone as far as public health is concerned we using that alone to ban it from Ghana, I can assure you by the middle of this year surely that has to be done".
 Shisha Smoking
Shisha smoking – also called hookah, narghile, waterpipe, or hubble-bubble smoking – is a way of smoking tobacco, sometimes mixed with fruit or molasses sugar, through a bowl and hose or tube.
The tube ends in a mouthpiece from which the smoker inhales the smoke from the substances being burnt into their lungs.
Shisha smoking is traditionally used by people from Middle Eastern or Asian community groups but is becoming increasingly popular
Traditionally shisha tobacco contains cigarette tobacco, so like cigarettes, it contains nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, such as arsenic and lead. As a result, shisha smokers are at risk of the same kinds of diseases as cigarette smokers, such as heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease and problems during pregnancy.
It’s difficult to say exactly how much smoke or toxic substances you’re exposed to in a typical shisha session.People smoke shisha for much longer periods of time than they smoke a cigarette, and in one puff of shisha, you inhale the same amount of smoke as you’d get from a smoking a whole cigarette.
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