Cigars Are Not Safer Than Cigarettes

Cigars have a reputation and are perceived as being safer to smoke that cigarettes are. But according to researchers from Penn State they are just as addictive and harmful, adding that small cigars can contain just as much if not more nicotine than cigarettes contain.

Currently there are loopholes in the way that small cigars are taxed that allow these products to be cheaper than regular cigarettes. They also manage to avoid the regulation making it so that cigarettes can not be flavored, small cigars come in a variety of flavors.

Researchers analyzed nicotine in the smoke from a variety of types of popular brands of small of filtered cigar and found that the amount of nicotine contained in a small cigar was similar to or greater than what can be found in cigarette smoke. Researchers have published their findings in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

The research involved the comparison of nicotine delivery from 8 popular common brands of small cigars with 2 types of cigarettes commonly used in studies. Nicotine was measured by first collecting smoke from each kind of cigar with a smoking machine in a laboratory, which smoked the products using 2 methods to take into account for the different manners in which people smoke. Using the ISO method the machine took a two second puff every 60 seconds with no filter vents blocked. Using the CI method the machine took two second puffs that were 30 seconds apart with the vents blocked. The nicotine extracted was then analyzed from both groups.

It was found that when the CI method was used the mean average delivery of nicotine from the small cigars was 3.49 milligrams per cigar, and in the cigarettes sampled it was 2.13. When the ISO method was used the mean average delivery of nicotine from the small cigars was 1.24 milligrams per cigar, and in the cigarettes sampled it was 0.87.

High levels of nicotine delivery cause nausea, the levels some of the brands of small cigars contained was surprising to some of the researchers. The brand that had the highest level of nicotine delivery was clove flavored and is a very popular brand. Researchers suggest that it may be clove flavored perhaps because cloves ease that nausea.  Noting that these small cigars are basically cigarettes, and consumers need to be made to understand they are not less harmful. Adding that regulations need to include these small cigars in with cigarettes which may make them not as popular.