The 4-1-1 on Cigars

Some people think that smoking cigars isn't dangerous - but they couldn't be more wrong. Smoking cigars carries with it significant risks to your health.

Cigars have more tar and nicotine than cigarettes do! A big cigar can have as much as 40 times more tar and nicotine than a cigarette. (CDC, 1997)
Men who smoke cigars or pipes face increased risk of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and other ills, similar to those who smoke up to 19 cigarettes per day. (International Journal of Epi, 2003)
According to the National Institutes of Health’s “Cigars: Health Effects and Trends (2002),” having one cigar per day multiplies your likelihood of developing esophageal cancer by 2.28 times.
According to the N.C. Youth Tobacco Survey (2007), 13 percent of N.C. high school students and 3.9 percent of middle school students currently use cigars.
Cigar smokers are three times more likely than nonsmokers to get lung cancer (Journal of NCI, 1985), and they're four to ten times more likely than nonsmokers to get cancers of the larynx, mouth and esophagus. (Eur J cancer, 1993). And, unfortunately, since they were left out of the law that requires cigarette packages to require health warnings, cigar packages aren't required to carry any health warnings at all.
There has been a disturbing trend in recent years... cigar use has been increasing, with sales of cigars up more than 40 percent since 1993. This appears to be related to an increase in marketing of cigar smoking as being glamorous, chic and sexy, as well as due to an increase in the marketing of cigars to women. Cigar use by women has increased by at least 20 times in recent years!
The secondhand smoke from cigars is more dangerous than the smoke from cigarettes. It has 5 times the tar pollution and 25 times the carbon monoxide of a cigarette. There are more dangerous chemicals in the smoke, and the smoke lingers longer. It takes three hours for the air in a room to return to normal after one cigar is smoked. (Repace, unpublished data, 1997)

So... steer clear of cigars! They may appear to be safer than cigarettes, but that's just because they've managed to escape the same regulations that cigarettes have to abide by. In reality, cigars are more harmful to your health than cigarettes. Watch out! See the Youth Tobacco Survey (link opens in new window) to read more on teen tobacco use in North Carolina.