NEW YORK CITY — Hookah smokers aren't breathing as easily with a trio of new laws Mayor Bill de Blasio signed Monday. The rules ban new hookah bars from opening under the city's Smoke-Free Air Act, while requiring existing lounges to post warning signs and raising the minimum age to buy hookah tobacco to 21 from 18.

The bills emerged from city lawmakers' concerns about the dangers of hookah smoking. Hookahs are water pipes used to smoke shisha, a goopy mixture that usually contains molasses and tobacco or herbs, at dozens of establishments around the city.

Hookah is often marketed to teens as a safer alternative to cigarettes when it's actually just as harmful to the smokers and those around them, officials said. Some 16.4 percent of high schoolers and 5.6 percent of middle schoolers said they smoked hookah in 2016, one of the bills says.

Watch: New Hookah Bars Banned In NYC Under New Laws

"Its prevalent use is putting the health of our city and youth at risk," city Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Washington Heights), who sponsored one of the new laws, said in a statement. "Today, we are taking a clear stance in protecting the health and well-being of New Yorkers."

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One new law regulates hookah bars that serve shisha without tobacco under the Smoke-Free Air Act, which bans most indoor smoking. The law requires permits for the establishments, bans anyone younger than 21 from entering them and sets fines if they break city rules.

Teens are barred from buying non-tobacco shisha under another law that raises the minimum purchase age to 21. The third law requires hookah bars to hang signs warning of the health risks of non-tobacco shisha.

The city rules follow the federal Food and Drug Administration's decision last year to regulate hookah and electronic cigarettes the same as cigarettes and other tobacco products. Smoking hookah for 45 minutes has the same effect as smoking 120 cigarettes, Rodriguez said.

"The bills passed today are particularly timely as the number of venues that serve hookah have increased dramatically over the last five years, and hookah smoking is increasing in popularity among New York City youth," the city health commissioner, Dr. Mary T. Bassett, said in a statement.

(Lead image by Bruno Vincent/Getty Images)

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