Cigar smoking may raise risks of heart disease, cancer

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June 9, 1999
Web posted at: 5:01 p.m. EDT (2003 GMT)

(CNN) -- With sales up 50 percent since 1993, Americans light up more than 5 million cigars a year. Not since the 1970s have cigar sales been so high. But the stogie craze is not without its risks, according to a study published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

The NEJM study found cigar smokers were more likely to develop cardiovascular disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and twice as likely as nonsmokers to suffer from cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus or lungs.

Dr. Charles Iribarren, an epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, California, studied the medical records of 1,546 cigar smokers and 16,228 nonsmokers, all men, between 1971 and 1995.

The research showed the risk for cigar smokers was not as great as for those who smoke cigarettes, probably because most cigar smokers do not often inhale smoke or hold it in their lungs.

According to Iribarren, cigarette smokers' risk of coronary heart disease is three times that of nonsmokers. Cigarette smokers are also 10 times more likely to suffer from lung cancer and have 20 to 25 times the risk of cardiac lung disease as nonsmokers.

"But our study shows conclusively that there are very serious health consequences associated with chronic cigar use," Iribarren said.

Surgeon General David Satcher, who has been pushing the Federal Trade Commission to require warning labels on cigars like those on cigarettes, wrote an editorial accompanying the study.

"Cigar smoking seems to have become a fad," he said. "The implication is that people don't think its dangerous. This is more very solid evidence of the dangers of cigar smoking."

The surgeon general also wants to make cigar manufacturers disclose ingredients, continue assessing those ingredients, and educate children to keep them from smoking cigars.