I only smoke once a year. It is my Christmas tradition. Usually a good quality cigar.
Now my family physician before he retired said he had no problem with this.
So I just have to ask: statistically speaking, am I facing any potential serious problems down the road? Because I personally think some of the alleged dangers of smoking are rather overblown. In fact now, I tend to support the rights of smokers. But that is for another thread.
So back to my question: am I likely facing any harm?
Pretty much only if you fall asleep while smoking it and start a fire.
I used to sell life insurance. Smoking is a big issue for them, for obvious reasons. Some companies are incredibly strict as to when they consider someone to be a smoker. People who smoke a monthly cigar will get rated a smoker with some companies, others won’t rate them. But I don’t remember any that were completely zero tolerance. And believe me - if the life insurance industry thought one cigar a year would decrease the number of premiums they could get out you, they’d raise your rates in a heartbeat.
According to this, there is a known link between cigar smoking and certain types of cancer. Specifically, it says “Cigar smoking causes cancer of the oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, and lung. It may also cause cancer of the pancreas. Moreover, daily cigar smokers, particularly those who inhale, are at increased risk for developing heart disease and other types of lung disease.”
Does that mean that a once-a-year cigar might possibly lead to cancer? While I honestly doubt it would, I wouldn’t take the chance myself. As I get older I try harder and harder to distance myself from anything that’s known to cause cancer. YMMV
If you don’t inhale, just make sure you get a regular dental checkup. Good advice anyway.
My Dads MD made him switch to cigars then pipes and bade him get a dental check up twice a year. As the old doc said “You get lung cancer, we crack you open, and the chance of recovery isn’t good, hard to catch early. You get a mouth cancer, we spray some numbing stuff and scoop it out, and you walk out, usually a full recovery”
Overall, your “smoking” is about as safe as it could be.
IaNaRD.
Personally I don’t think a cigar once a year is anything to worry about. But I don’t think your argument here is valid.
The way insurance products are priced, they can’t be too low or too high. Too low, because they’ll lose money on the payouts, but also too high because they’ll be undercut by other companies selling for lower prices. Insurance is extremely price-sensitive.
Overlaying the above dynamic, is the complexity of adding adding additional categories. I assume the risk from smoking varies based on how much a person smokes, but the insurers mostly have only two categories, smoker or non-smoker. Too complex to really figure out exactly where a given person stands.
So if they’re considering a person who smokes once a year, the question is not “does this person have 0% increased risk versus >0% increased risk?” It’s “from a marketing and underwriting standpoint, does it make more sense to lump them with ‘smokers’ or ‘non-smokers’?” Let’s assume - not that I do, but let’s suppose - that a once a year smoker increases his risk of smoking by 3% and that a regular smoker increases the risk by 60%. If they put the once-a-year guy into the “smoking” category, then they have to increase his rates by 60%, and all such people will simply buy their insurance elsewhere, and they will lose their chance to make what could be a decent profit. Or their other choice would be to make a separate category for once-a-year smokers at 3% higher, which is not worthwhile. (Which is besides for it being very hard to verify to begin with.)
In this case, the whole market would be moving together to price the once-a-year guy if it was a significant risk, as they’re all working off the same actuarial charts. But you’re correct - I’m sure there’s an added health risk smoking even once a decade, but it’s too small to make a difference, and the same would hold true for once-a-year guy. My point was more that once-a-month guy starts running into issues, and the life insurance companies are the canary in the coal mine for life expectancy.
In my 20’s, I used to smoke cigars on a weekly, sometimes twice a week, with a group of guy friends, that all enjoyed the smoke along with the conversation.
In my late twenties and into my 30’s I would only smoke cigars when playing golf or poker, about 15 times per year. At this point, I realized that I hated the taste in my mouth the next morning more than I liked the taste while smoking the cigars.
That’s when I gave it up for good. Haven’t smoked in about 20 years.
I can’t remember ever hearing about “the alleged dangers of smoking” that didn’t mean “smoking relatively often” (certainly more often than once a year).
Are you inhaling or Bill Clinton’ing it?
As a dentist who has seen a fair amount of oral cancer, your father’s MD is incorrect.
In once-a-year smokers?
Well, that was decades ago, and the idea was to get my dad to quit cigarettes.
But still, regular dental check ups are good, yes?
No, the switch to cigars and pipes wasn’t for a once a year smoker. No never even seen a once a year smoker.
I’m no doctor, but I’d say that your risk level is pretty low. It’s not zero, but it’s going to be fairly close to that.
As an example, I also am a cigar smoker. I used to smoke several cigars a week…up to one a day at one point. My doctor had major issues with that. So, I cut back. I went from 1 per day to 1 per week to, perhaps, 1-2 a month. This has reduced my risk level, according to my doctor, by over 50%. So, still some risk there (plus, gods know what damage I did when I smoked a cigar…or two…a day), but it’s lower than it was. Yours is going to be even lower.
One good thing about reducing the number of cigars has been it’s saved me quite a bit of money over time…money I could then spend on drinking more fine tequila and single malt scotch. 
The oldest person who every lived (122) supposedly smoked cigarettes for over 100 years. She quit because her eyesight got so bad she couldn’t see the end of the cigarette to light it.
Seriously though, after over 40 years, I quit smoking cigarettes 14 (nearly 15) years ago. However, I still have quite a number of cigars in a humidor that I’ve had for years. My son and I will smoke the occasional cigar outside on our deck on a nice summer afternoon or evening with an adult beverage. The odds of dying from that are probably on par with dying from Covid vaccine. Maybe even less, IMHO.
Only from non-smokers (line forms behind me).
Dan
I smoke maybe three cigars a year. Always premium Cuban or Dominican handrolleds, which are pretty pricey here. I also like my pipe from time to time, and again, the pipe tobacco is pretty pricey. So such things are rare, and expensive, treats.
My ex-wife, a doctor, said that such rare indulgences wouldn’t harm me. No more than living in a city, where there are auto exhaust fumes, factory emissions, and similar to deal with.
My Dad taught me to smoke a pipe and cigars, in an effort to wean me off cigarettes. One thing Dad emphasized was that one never inhales pipe or cigar smoke, like you do with cigarettes–you simply enjoy it for the flavours that the blender intended. Roll it around in your mouth, enjoy the flavour, then blow it out. Never inhale it. And I never have.