PEOPLE who smoke socially are more than twice as likely to die of lung disease and more than eight times as likely to die of lung cancer as non-smokers, a study suggests.
The research, presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress, shows that the risk of lung cancer death for “social smokers” – those who smoke fewer than 10 cigarettes per day – is not substantially lower than those who smoke more than 20 a day.
Researchers said their 17-year-long study suggests that cutting down, or combining fewer cigarettes with vaping, is no substitute for quitting.
The research was by Dr Pallavi Balte and Dr Elizabeth Oelsner, at Columbia University Irving Medical Centre in New York.
Dr Balte told the virtual conference: “Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, but it’s easy to assume that if you only smoke a little, the risks won’t be too high.
“Previous research suggests that people are cutting down on smoking, for example in the USA the proportion of smokers smoking less than 10 cigarettes per day has increased from 16 per cent to 27 per cent.
“So we wanted to study the risks to social smokers compared to people who don’t smoke and compared to heavier smokers.”
The study included 18,730 people with an average age of 61. Researchers followed them for an average of 17 years, during which time 649 died of respiratory disease and 560 died of lung cancer.
Among non-smokers, the proportion of people who died from respiratory diseases was 1.8 per cent and the proportion who died of lung cancer was 0.6 per cent. Among 'social smokers' (fewer than 10 cigarettes a day) around 3.3 per cent died from respiratory diseases and 4.7 per cent died from lung cancer.
For heavy smokers – more than 20 cigarettes a day – these proportions were 10.1 per cent and 12.9 per cent, respectively.
The researchers said social smokers had around half the rate of death from respiratory disease of heavy smokers but two thirds the rate of lung cancer death.
“You might think that if you only smoke a few cigarettes a day you are avoiding most of the risk. But our findings suggest that social smoking is disproportionately harmful,” Dr Balte said.
