| abstract | - There is absolutely no way for this statistic to be true. There are too many unknown variables at play here. First off, it is impossible to know exactly how many cigarettes a person has smoked in their life. It is also impossible to know how much longer a dead person might have lived. Now, it is possible to make an estimate like this by using the average lifespans of a sample of non-smokers and smokers. But, if that's what was done, the results are highly suspect. By this number, a person who smokes a pack a day for 50 years would only die about 4 years earlier than if they hadn't smoked? Besides, the number changes depending on who you ask (for example, the person who had answered before me claimed that a cigarette takes an hour off of your life...a claim that would mean smoking a pack a day effectively cuts your remaining life in half!). These types of deviations in the story are the most common way of recognizing an old wives tale. Also, research shows that quitting smoking instantly decreases your odds of dying due to smoking-related causes, so it can't be said that each cigarette instantly shortens your life. It's simply that the damage adds up over the years of smoking and eventually catches up to you. The bottom line? Smoking is bad for you. You will die sooner if you smoke. But there is no true rule about how much each cigarette will shorten your life. The likely reason this myth exists is that 6-7 minutes is about how long it takes to smoke a cigarette. This was probably a metaphorical loss of life that eventually became confused and thought of as a real, scientific loss of life.
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