Reply #10: death will get everyone, & ill health will get 99%. and only a fraction of smokers [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

get cancer.

even for the cancer most closely linked with smoking, lung cancer, about 15% never smoked, and most smokers don't get lung cancer.

lifetime risk of getting lung cancer for male smokers is about 18%.

and most get it late in life, e.g. my father-in=law died of it, but-- he was healthy until he was in his eighties; diagnosed because of a new chest pain and died about 3 months later, at 85.

lucky he was living in japan.

my life-time non-smoking relation currently dying of colon cancer. doubt he's costing less than my father-in-law did, but he'd dying about 15 years younger.