ASU professor: Smoking increases risk for severe COVID-19 illness

PHOENIX — If you’ve been planning to quit smoking, there’s a good reason why now is a good time.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider smokers to be at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19.

That doesn’t surprise Scott Leischow, an Arizona State University professor whose research focuses on tobacco dependence. He also created and implemented the Arizona Smokers Helpline.

“When a person has been smoking, they’re causing damage to their lungs,” he explained. “And when a person gets COVID-19, that also causes physical damage to the lungs. So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that smokers are at high risk for more serious effects.”

Leischow added the research on the impact of COVID-19 on smokers “has been fairly consistent.”

“It shows that if they’re heavier smokers, they’re more likely to be hospitalized and more likely to experience more serious effects of COVID-19 while they’re in the hospital,” Leischow said.

For that reason, smokers are being prioritized to get the COVID-19 vaccine before the general population in some states. Arizona is not one of them.

“Some people have considered that a bit controversial,” Leischow said. “But the states that have made that decision have done it based on science — what’s increasing their risk, what’s getting people into the hospitals and increasing their risk of dying from COVID-19.”

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