Just One Cigarette a Day…
And you’re still a smoker. An Irish study published in the British Medical Journal defines smokers as people who smoke one cigarette or more a day. You qualify as a smoker with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse if you smoke one cigarette a month.
If you smoke just one cigarette a day, you’re still jeopardizing your health. According to a study of nearly 43,000 people from the mid-1970s to 2002, if you smoke just one to four cigarettes a day:
- You’re three times more likely to die of coronary artery disease than a non-smoker.
- Your risk of getting lung cancer is three times higher if you’re male, five times higher if you’re a woman.
- You’re about 1.5 times at greater risk of dying from any cause than a non-smoker.
OK, one cigarette a day is one too many and I’m fooling myself if I think:
- Once cigarette a day is harmless.
- That I can stick to just one cigarette a day over time.
Dad’s Smoking
My Dad actually maintained a light smoking habit for years. When he’d get home from work, he and Mother would lounge in the comfy floral chairs in the living room. They’d each have a drink or glass of wine. Dad would smoke two to four cigarettes (five, tops, but normally fewer) in his languorous, deliberate way, always blowing smoke up in a thoughtful manner. I mean, Dad could look both smart and sophisticated just smoking a cigarette.
Mother, on the other hand, smoked cigarette after cigarette, stubbing them out in the little red ashtray she carried around the house. (She was fastidious about the house and did not like dirty ashtrays.) She chain-smoked until the effects of a brain tumor finally made her quit.
This ritual was Dad’s way of recovering from the work day. But I think Mother was sometimes a little bored with the daily necessity of the event and absolute minutia that was part of Dad’s discourse.
