This was demonstrated once again by the faithful reprinting in newspapers across the country of a press release promoting a ridiculous study done primarily by a group of tobacco know-nothings at Columbia University about the health impacts of cigars and pipes.

Of special irritation was a one-column article in the widely-read Parade Magazine about the topic that so vexed me that I had to write to the magazine’s Managing Editor, Dakila Divina, in New York:

Dear Mr. Divina:

When angered by a slanderous attack on himself, his family or his administration, Abraham Lincoln often wrote a stinging reply, but then stashed the letter in his desk instead of sending it. He found that the act of writing the letter was cathartic enough.

Not for me.

Having waited a month since the publication of “The Dangers of Pipes and Cigars” in your April 11 issue, I am still so indignant that I must write to you in protest.

This article, by Ranit Mishori, promoted a stunningly flawed study led by a Dr. Graham Barr of the Columbia University Medical Center and funded by a division of the National Institute of Health.

I was not surprised that the creators of this study published a slanted review of carefully-selected, existing data concerning cigar and pipe smokers; such treatment is to be fully expected. The current war on all forms of tobacco by the medical industry and the U.S. government long ago abandoned any semblance of scientific balance or truth-seeking in favor of continuous attacks in hope of eliminating smoking.

I was, however, devastated to see such garbage promoted in Parade, long positioned as a responsible information resource, but which recommended the results of this astonishingly bad study.

Why is it so bad? Because the study’s “conclusions” are both unsupported and ignore the best-available information on the subject it purports to cover.

The Columbia study contained no new research, but an examination of a previous study that included just 56 individuals who smoked either cigars or pipes and did not smoke cigarettes.

56!

Any student in a statistics class can tell you that you need at least 384 subjects for populations greater than 250,000 and there were 13.1 million cigar users in the U.S. and 1.9 million pipe smokers in 2008.

Moreover, the study itself says “few participants smoked pipes or cigars…Effect estimates in this group were therefore relatively imprecise...” No kidding; what the survey actually showed was that among cigar-only smokers, the odds for decreased airflow to the lungs increased a trivial 1 percent when adjusted for age, race, sex, and height, and were 37 percent less than non-smokers when more carefully adjusted for 13 factors also including body mass, education, family history, and so on.

That, of course, is not what the authors concluded.

Additionally, the study report states “no U.S. studies have reported on the possible effects of cumulative pipe and cigar smoking on lung function.” This is wrong. In fact, the impact of cigar smoking was exhaustively reviewed by the National Cancer Institute in its monograph on cigars published in 1998.

Incidence of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) was examined using the American Cancer Society’s massive CPS-I study, which included 15,072 cigar smokers. The result? For those who smoked an average of 1–2 cigars per day, there was no impact at all vs. non-smokers up through age 64, and for those who do not inhale, no impact through age 79!

Now consider that in the U.S. in 2009, smokers of all types of cigars averaged just 2.93 per week and smokers of handmade, premium cigars averaged a grand total of 1.59 per week!

But the CPS-I results are nowhere mentioned in the Columbia “study.”

I cannot comment on the impact of pipe smoking, as I am not a pipe smoker. But as a premium cigar smoker for more than 20 years, having never met an “addicted” cigar smoker and knowing the care with which most cigar enthusiasts enjoy their hobby, your article is an insult.

It is possible that your author did not even read the study, but simply rewrote the press release announcing the publication of the study? Naturally, that study document promoted the authors’ conclusion that cigar and pipe smoking are bad, without disclosing that the sample was statistically invalid and ignoring the other shortcomings of the report. In that case, you may wish to inquire about the depth of research used by your author for her articles.

In my view, cigar smokers are owed an apology by Parade and an acknowledgment that your April 11 article on the actual impact of cigars and pipe smoking was, at best, “incompletely reported.”

You have my thanks in advance for your thoughtful consideration.

- - Rich Perelman, Editor-in-Chief CigarCyclopedia.com