Little cigars are easier to access than cigarettes, but they’re no less harmful, according to Mayo Clinic researcher and public health advocate Mignonne Guy. “The average cigarette has approximately 8 milligrams of nicotine in it; the average cigar can range anywhere from 100 to 200 milligrams of nicotine,” she says.
Another problem is that today’s teens and young adults don’t just puff on their cigars, like in the old days. They inhale. “They’re treating it like a cigarette and using it like a cigarette,” Guy says. “They’ll say I’ll use one when I’m stressed out or after a test, or after a long day of work.”
Flavored cigars and cigarillos are also sometimes used as wrappers to smoke marijuana.
Cigar use among high school students rose from 7 percent in 2009 to 12 percent in 2011, according to a study released earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. High school boys are now as likely to smoke cigars as cigarettes. About 3 percent of middle schoolers said they’d smoked cigars, compared to 4 percent who smoked cigarettes.