San Francisco KTVU report: how many cigarettes make for safe smoking?

You might say, just one cigarette now and again can't hurt, can it? It can't be all that bad, surely? Or you might say you've been smoking for years and you're still here, so that probably means you are immune, right?

Not necessarily so, says San Francisco's KTVU Channel 2 news. The San Francisco news station came out with a report this lunchtime that says that even a limited amount of social smoking or drawing in someone else's secondhand smoke is enough to block your arteries and cause a heart attack.

San Francisco's KTVU revealed that the above were the findings of the newest surgeon general's report on the habit that San Franciscan's, along with other Americans, just can't seem to kick.

Although many San Francisco residents are under the impression that lung cancer is the biggest fear and that can take decades to develop, the new report says that "tobacco smoke begins poisoning immediately - more than 7,000 chemicals in each puff rapidly spread through the body to cause cellular damage in nearly every organ."

"That one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack," reveals Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, according to San Francisco's KTVU. Benjamin also advises San Francisco residents to stay away from anyone else who is smoking.

That's because around 443,000 Americans die from illnesses every year that are related to smoking.

The good news is that smoking-related illnesses have decreased since the warning was first issued by the Surgeon General in 1964, but the decrease has now leveled off and around 46 million--that's one in five-- Americans still smoke and millions more are exposed to the second-hand smoke.

KTVU San Francisco says that "The government had hoped to drop the smoking rate to 12 percent by this year, a goal not only missed but that's now been put off to 2020."

Some experts are asking why cigarettes have not been banned altogether, since this is now the 30th report the surgeon general has given.

"How many reports more does Congress need to have to say that cigarettes as a class of products ought to be banned?" asked Dr. K. Michael Cummings of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a nicotine expert, who was one of the people who reviewed the cigarette report.

"One-third of the patients who are in our hospitals are there today because of cigarettes," he says.

That question was not answered in the report. Some San Franciscans have their own opinions on that:

"Maybe the government doesn't want to give up the taxes it collects from the sale of cigarettes. But it's crazy because look at the expense that is paid out in health treatment and then in disability benefits when the person becomes too ill to work," says San Francisco resident Hattie Costello, who gave up smoking.

The conclusion in the report? That there is NO safe level of exposure to the smoke from cigarettes, either as a smoker or as someone who ends up inhaling second-hand smoke.

San Francisco smokers are learning from KTVU that even the very first inhalation can be enough to cause a heart attack in a person who may already have clogged arteries, even if the clogging is slight and the person doesn't know their arteries are clogged, says Dr. Terry Pechacek of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Too often people think the occasional social cigarette is not so dangerous, when in fact this report says yes, it is," he said.