I don’t know when I became I social smoker. I have always hated smoking; the stench, the taste, the cancer… I was always the first to tell people to stop blowing smoke in my face. And then suddenly I was smoking at parties.
I found a NY Times article that speaks about the harms of social smoking. All in extreme is bad right? You can drink as long as you don’t do it every day, same as eating junk food. Smoking though, is probably not worth the risk.
“We wanted to determine whether occasional smoking can impair flow-mediated dilation and found that repeated bouts of cigarette smoking — even if classified as occasional — appear to increase the risk for developing cardiovascular disease in otherwise healthy, young people,” said lead author Lee Stoner, a former doctoral student and now a researcher at Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand.
After speaking to several social smokers I realized that the most common fear is of becoming a regular smoker. As long as they don’t become regulars, their health is not at risk. Most of them agree on the “everything in excess is bad,” theory; if it is done ocassionally, no bad can come from it. Not only does this article deny this but shows that smoking cannot be considered another unhealthy occasional slip but more of a yes or no deal.
Conclusion? A social smoker is still a smoker, with a euphemism.
