Are cigars safer than cigarettes?

Are cigars safer than cigarettes?

Linda Hyder Ferry (Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine and Family Medicine, Loma Linda University School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What is a 'hookah' or 'shisha'?; Are hookah or shisha water pipes safer than cigarettes?; What is a 'bidi'? and more...

The amount of carcinogens are not much different. In fact, the nicotine can even be higher. One large fat cigar, even if it's not even lit, if it's just kept in someone's mouth, you'll absorb nicotine from just the contact of the tobacco leaf end of the cigar sitting in the mouth without it even being lit. So it acts almost like a chewing tobacco by being there. So you get nicotine from the cigar at fairly high levels, a large cigar has about as much nicotine as a casually smoked pack of cigarettes. Carbon monoxide levels are higher, and oral cancer is greater. If you don't inhale it deeply and directly into the lungs, not quite as much damage as a habitual cigarette smoker but when you balance one for the other, you cannot consider that safe.