Smokers Don’t Think a Few Cigarettes Will Harm Their Health

Heart disease, lung cancer, throat cancer, diabetes—the list of bad things that smoking does to your health is long and growing longer. Thanks to public health warnings and education campaigns, most of us have heard that cigarettes can be dangerous to your wellbeing and can shorten your life.

But one group who should be getting that message loud and clear may be in a bit of denial. In a study of more than 1,600 French smokers and non-smokers, 34% said that lighting up 10 cigarettes a day would not put them at higher risk of lung cancer. And fewer than 40% knew that their risk of lung cancer wouldn’t disappear if even if they quit smoking. The results were presented at the European Lung Cancer Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The fact that one third of subjects wrongly considered that a daily consumption of up to 10 cigarettes was not associated with any risk of lung cancer is particularly impressive and threatening,” writes study author Dr. Laurent Greillier from Aix Marseille University in response to questions about the findings.

The results were especially worrisome since the participants in the study were 40 years old to 75 years old and therefore spent most of their adult lives hearing strong public health warnings about the dangers of smoking. That means that while anti-smoking campaigns have been effective, they may not have educated people deeply enough about the dangers of tobacco. That’s especially true for people who engage in what they consider to be “safe” or “light” smoking, the study finds. “Our results suggest that public health policies must continue to focus on the tobacco pandemic, and notably initiate campaigns concerning the risk of any cigarette,” says Greillier.