Skip the Stogie
 Celebrities
and cigars. Oscar winner Jack Nicholson sports a stogie on the cover
of Cigar magazine, right along with Whoopi Goldberg, Claudia
Schiffer and Rhode Island native James Woods.
Movie stars and models aren't the only ones puffing on this new
trend. Nationwide sales are up 44 percent since 1993.
"People assume that cigars aren't as harmful as
cigarettes because you don't inhale," says Raymond Niaura, PhD, at
Lifespan's division for behavioral and preventive medicine.
"Nothing could be further from the truth. Right now there are no
standard methods for testing nicotine and tar content in cigars, but the
emerging evidence suggests that they are at least as dangerous as
cigarettes, if not more so."
Regular cigar smokers face almost twice the risk of dying from all
forms of cancer combined. They also have a higher risk of heart disease.
And don't think you're safe if you're inhaling secondhand cigar
smoke. Carbon monoxide emissions from just one cigar are 10 times more
potent than those from one cigarette.
Research on cigar smoking has not been as extensive-or as
widely publicized-as that of cigarette smoking. "More studies need
to be done to determine just how serious the effects of cigars are,"
Niaura says.
Even before the final word is in, however, the stogie seems to be a fad
best forgotten.
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