From 2000 to 2011 smoking cigarettes has decreased by 27.5 percent, says a new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. But it doesn’t seem to be stopping smokers who have since decided that buying cigarettes are too costly.

A pack of cigarettes has increased due to taxes over the past few years, causing many to turn to another fast pick me up, cigars. Cigars are equally as dangerous as cigarettes, but at half the price. According to the report, “From 2000 to 2011, the largest increases were in consumption of pipe tobacco (482 percent) and large cigars (233 percent).”

“When manufactured cigarettes may, at some point in the future, no longer be their primary source of income, they will look to other ways,” says Thomas Glynn, Director of international cancer control at the American Cancer Society, tells the Detroit Free Press. “Cigars, roll-your-own, various forms of smokeless tobacco—[all] maintaining their customer’s nicotine dependence.”

Aside from being cheaper, cigars also come in a variety of flavors – vanilla, grape, chocolate – all the more appealing to smoke, but with the same toxic chemicals. It’s more likely that cigars will draw in a new form of smokers, a younger crowd with less disposable income.

The tobacco industry, in all its craftiness, causes the healthcare industry upwards of 96 billion, – yes, with a b, – a year, making smoking the leading cause of preventable deaths. According to Chris Hansen, the president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, it kills upwards of 443,000 per year.

Do you know someone who smokes cigars or cigarettes?

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