Cigar tobacco leaves are first aged for about a year and then fermented in a multi-step process that can take from three to five months. Fermentation causes chemical and bacterial reactions that change the tobacco and give cigars a different taste and smell from cigarettes. Cigars come in different sizes, some as small as a cigarette, others much larger. Large cigars typically contain between 5 and 17 grams of tobacco. It is not unusual for some premium brands to have as much tobacco in one cigar as in a whole pack of cigarettes.
Large cigars can take between one and two hours to smoke.
As with cigarettes, the amount of exposure to cigar smoke is a key factor in determining the risk involved. Smoking more cigars each day or inhaling cigar smoke leads to increased exposure and increased risks. For those who inhale, cigar smoking appears to be linked to cancer of the pancreas and bladder as well. Most large scale studies have looked at the number of deaths from cancer in cigar smokers, not the number of cancer cases. While this might lead to an underestimation of the number of cancer cases caused by cigar smoking, the figures are still alarming.