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Originally Posted by hotreds

This has actually been discussed a fair amount. Studies(fwiw) have shown that smoking one or two cigars a day WITHOUT INHALING and WITHOUT CHEWING (holding the cigar in your hands rather than mouth between puffs) will do very little to endanger your health. That being said, everyone is different so you pays your money and you takes your chances. I AM concerned about the health risks of smoking, but I DO believe that the positive far outweighs the negative when it comes to lighting up my pipe or my cigar- AND I do follow the "rulz" mentioned above- including NOT holding my pipe in my mouth between puffs either.

Hugh is right on.

I wrote a cigar related article on a website and received a few "cigars will kill you" replies. Here's a link: http://sharpologist.com/2012/05/rela...ar-primer.html

Here's my reply:

We all know there are some risks involved in smoking or any tobacco use. However, casual cigar smoking is not considered a significant risk. While commenter Dr. K’s link shows some simple truths about tobacco, it contains some misinformation, it’s misleading, and it does not quantify risk. Similarly you could say driving causes millions of deaths per year. While true, this statement does not quantify what the real risks are. In fact it is often difficult to find pertinent data on cigar smoking. Most tobacco studies fail to quantify cigar smoking risks because their results are muddled with cigarette smokers who also smoke cigars, cigar smokers who use smokeless tobacco, or cigar smokers who are heavy alcohol users/abusers. However, one study is different. The National Cancer Institute did a comprehensive study of over 500,000 men studied for 12 years and concluded that smoking up to 1-2 cigars per day failed to show a significantly increased risk of cancer.

You can read the entire study itself here (Page 22 is a summary chart):
http://www.cancercontrol.cancer.gov/...9_complete.PDF

Or you can read two written summaries here:
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/4/333.long

http://www.cigargroup.com/faq/health/ncifaq.htm

That said, most cigar smokers I know smoke 1-2 cigars per week. Some are daily smokers but, the majority are not. I may enjoy 3 or 4 in a day but not smoke again for weeks. There is risk in everything from driving to work to eating fast food for lunch. As with many other things in life, moderation is key. I hope those of you interested in cigars will learn something from this guide. For those of you not interested, please do not take it as my recommendation to be like Winston Churchill and smoke a box of cigars a day.

...although, I'm not going to give you a hard time if you want to smoke a box of cigars per day.