Now I Understand

THIS:
Slowly but surely, American kids have gotten the message that cigarette smoking is stinky, smelly and a hazard to your health.

Now, if only they would believe the same about cigars.

While cigarette consumption declined in the United States by 10 percent from 2000 to 2004, cigar consumption jumped 28 percent, according to a recent report published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Other studies have found that teens who smoke cigars are definitely behind some of that increase. For instance, a 2004 survey conducted in Cleveland found that 23 percent of the 4,409 teens polled preferred cigars, compared to 16 percent choosing cigarettes. . . .

While it's difficult to compare cigarettes and cigars head-to-head in terms of health risk, Banzhaf said, it's clear both are risky.
Cigar smoking is strongly linked to a host of deadly cancers of the lip, tongue, mouth, throat, esophagus, larynx and lung. According to data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, smoking just one or two cigars a day doubles the risk for oral and esophageal cancer and increases larynx cancer risk six-fold.

Risks rise even higher once users decide to inhale cigar smoke. Compared to nonsmokers, cigar smokers who inhale deeply face 27 times the risk of oral cancer and 53 times the risk of cancer of the larynx, according to the NIH report.

AND THIS:

"I have a politically incorrect smoking tent -- I don't know if you have heard about that one. People come in there, Democrats and Republicans, and they take off their jackets and rip off their ties and they sit down and they smoke a stogy and they talk and they schmooze."-- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), quoted by CNN, on how to break partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C.

That way of breaking up DC gridlock, I think I can sign to.