Occasional Smokers, Don't Underestimate Just A Few Cigarettes

A cigarette or two every now and then won't hurt your health, or will it? New findings show that occasional smokers really underestimate how an occasional cigarette can mess up your health.

Researchers analyzed data from a representative survey of 1602 French people aged between 40 and 75 years. This survey included 1463 people with no history of cancer, of whom 481 were former smokers and 330 were current smokers, with an average daily consumption of 14.2 cigarettes.

"Nowadays everyone knows that smoking is a risk factor for developing several cancers, especially lung cancer," oncologist Dr. Laurent Greillier said, in a news release. "In this new survey we hypothesized that the perception of the risk of developing this disease could be influenced by personal smoking history. In other words, we thought that the risk might be minimized in smokers compared with never-smokers."

Findings revealed that 34 percent wrongly considered that a daily consumption of up to 10 cigarettes was not associated with any risk of lung cancer.

"This finding is particularly impressive and threatening. It shows that relatively low cigarette consumption is considered as 'safe' for a lot of people. In our study, only half of subjects answered that there is no 'safe' cigarette," he added.

Furthermore, only half of current smokers consider themselves at a higher risk of lung cancer than the average-risk population and less than 40 percent of individuals were even aware that the risk of lung cancer never disappears after smoking cessation.

"It seems that people are aware about the dangers of tobacco for health, but might consider that the risks are not for themselves, but only for other people," Greillier said. "It is essential that public health policies continue to focus on the tobacco pandemic. Our findings suggest to urgently initiating campaigns concerning the risk of any cigarette. The war against tobacco is not over!"