For those smokers who don t feel the need to light up first thing in the morning, a new study published in the journal Cancer provides some seemingly good news. Researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine compared the behavior of nearly 5,000 smokers with lung cancer to that of almost 3,000 smokers without cancer. Those who reported having usually smoked within the first 30 minutes of waking were found to have doubled their risk of lung cancer, compared to those smokers who waited an hour before having a cigarette.
After accounting for other factors, such as the number of cigarettes smoked daily, the time to first cigarette effect remained. The unexpected finding led the study authors to suggest that the sooner a smoker lights up, the more smoke is inhaled and, therefore, the cancer risk increases. ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross says the findings indicate that those who smoke first thing in the morning are simply more addicted than smokers who can wait to have a cigarette; thus they are likely to take deeper drags. He adds, It s akin to drinking. If a person wakes up in the morning and needs a drink, that s a sign of alcoholism. So, in this study, the need to smoke upon rising is a behavior indicative of a stronger addiction and a greater intensity of smoking.
ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom questions the study s implications. Since it s perfectly obvious that smokers cannot cut their cancer risk by simply delaying the time of their first cigarette if that were true, we would have an easy way to cut the toll of lung cancer in half I think the study authors must have failed to take other factors into account," he says, "and the magic 30-minute number is only an artifact.