Social Smoking: How Can It Hurt You?
Lots of people say they’re “just social smokers.” Are you one of them? Do you bum smokes from regular smokers and offer the excuse that you aren’t really a smoker—just a social smoker?
Is there really such a thing as a social smoking? The surprising answer is yes. Some people really do smoke just a few cigarettes a week. But they often think that only smoking one or two cigarettes a day, or only smoking on the weekends or when out with friends, is safe, and that is simply untrue. If you are a social smoker, we want you to have the facts you deserve about the dangers of social smoking.
Social smokers often try to avoid addiction by infrequently smoking, and that is a tactic that just doesn’t work for nicotine, says Elizabeth E. Lloyd-Richardson, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and health behavior at Brown University. She’s an expert in adolescent and college-age smoking behavior.1 Dr. Lloyd-Richardson believes that one cigarette leads to another, and social smoking is absolutely not a good thing to try. Overall, social smokers end up smoking for many, many more years than they intended to.
There just is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke. By smoking occasionally, you definitely increase your chances of developing a tobacco-related disease, particularly heart disease. There are more than 4,000 chemicals contained in a cigarette and it’s smoke, including ammonia, a lung irritant; carbon monoxide, which reduces blood oxygen levels; methanol, a chemical that’s toxic when inhaled or swallowed; and hydrogen cyanide, a potent poison that interferes with respiratory function. Approximately 60 of the chemicals in cigarette smoke are known to cause cancer. Inhaling any of these chemicals significantly raises your risk for a host of serious medical problems.2
Whether you smoke a pack a day or only one or two cigarettes a month, every cigarette is doing you damage. Actually, every single puff has a negative impact on your health:
- The risk of lung cancer increases with every cigarette that is smoked.3
- Every cigarette makes artery walls stickier, as they collect dangerous fatty deposits.
- Every cigarette can create blood clots, which cause strokes. Some strokes kill, blind, or paralyze...others you don’t even know you’re having.
- Chemicals from every single cigarette get into your bloodstream and damage the delicate blood vessels inside your eye. We now know that smoking is a major cause of irreversible blindness.
- Every single time you inhale, you assault your lungs, which are like sponges with millions of tiny air sacs for transferring oxygen. Every breath of tobacco smoke attacks them.
- Every time you inhale tobacco, cigarette smoke condenses in your lungs to form tar.
- One damaged cell is all it takes to start lung cancer growing. Research shows how tobacco smoke attacks a vital gene, which protects lung cells from cancer.4
Staying fit and at a high level of mission readiness is tough enough without adding the dangers of chemicals, toxins, cancer, heart attack, stroke, and emphysema to the mix. Chances are, when you’re leaning on the bar or watching the game with your buddies, you are not thinking about the fact that you are adversely affecting your night vision, respiratory capacity, and wound healing rate. We know you’re there for your friends every day, and you know you need to be fit and ready to back them up when it counts the most. Smoking impairs mission readiness.
And what about the anti-social aspects of social smoking? Think about it. You don’t want to miss out on that first conversation, kiss, or cuddle because you smell like an ashtray. You might not be able to smell it, but smoke stinks. If you don’t want that stink on your clothes, in your car, and especially on your breath, you can’t smoke even one cigarette. There is nothing romantic about the look or smell of a smoker, and this applies to a regular smoker or an occasional smoker.
If you are a social smoker who can manage without a smoke most of the time, you can make the decision to quit tobacco for good. A lot of people are out there waiting to help you when you make that choice, so don’t be afraid to use our site and find your local cessation program or chat online with one of our counselors. Remember, every cigarette chips away at the healthy, strong, and determined person you strive to be, and the one your family, friends, and community look up to. Quit Tobacco—Make Everyone Proud!
References
1 DeNoon D. Can you get away with social smoking? [Internet]. Philadelphia, PA: First Step, Office of Alcohol Policy Initiatives, University of Pennsylvania. Cited 2009 Mar 10. Available from: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/ohe/library/drugs/smoking/social-smoking.htm
2 Hurt R. Occasional smoking is far from risk-free, experts say [Internet]. Newsday.com 2009 Feb 26 [cited 2009 Mar 10]. Available from: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-health-smoke0227,0,888775.story
3 Canadian Council for Tobacco Control. National non-smoking week: The truth about the health effects of tobacco [Internet]. Ottawa, Ontario: 2009 Jan [cited 2009 Mar 10]. Available from: http://www.nnsw.ca/factsheets/health_effects_tobacco.pdf
4 Research and Evaluation Committee of the National Expert Advisory Committee on Tobacco. Appendix A: Campaign advertisements and promotional material [Internet]. In: Australia’s National Tobacco Campaign: Evaluation report volume one: Every cigarette is doing you damage. Canberra ACT, Australia: 1999 May [cited 2009 Mar 10]. Available from: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf /Content/health-pubhlth-publicat-document-metadata-tobccamp.htm /$FILE/tobccamp_i.pdf