An interview with Jack White in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine quotes the musician as saying, “I quit smoking cigarettes like six years ago. ... These [the cigarillos he’s described as now smoking] are just baby cigars. I don’t inhale.” That sounds as though Mr. White (of whom, I must disclose, I am a huge fan) thinks those small cigars may be better for his health than the cigarettes he famously used to chain smoke. Turns out that’s not the case. Richard Hurt, director of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, explains, “There’s no safe tobacco product.” A cigarillo, he notes, “Is basically a little cigar, and it’s just as harmful as a cigarette.”

Washington Post by Jennifer Huget   4/11/12

Tags: Alcohol and Tobacco, Celebrity Patients, cigarillos, Dr. Richard Hurt, Jack White, Nicotine Dependence Center