Responding to Thines' good post (and it was), keep in mind that it's not just lung cancer that could be the result of smoking. Smoking does other things to you that can kill you.
It can wreck your blood pressure, damage your heart, lead to strokes and heart attacks and COPD. My mom was smoker. She died at 79 from it, and the last few years of her life were relatively expensive in terms of care. More expensive than had she not smoked, I'm guessing. She needed a home oxygen generator, a scooter to get around her own tiny apartment because she hadn't the strength or breath to walk, and boxes of medications that had to be delivered to her because she couldn't get out to get them for herself. A housekeeper paid for by the state, because she couldn't clean her own house anymore. A few hospital stays. Hospice end-of-life care.
She developed COPD in her 50s. It took almost 30 years for it to finally kill her. That's not "quick." And she continued to smoke two cigarettes a day until the last year of her life, when she simply couldn't breathe enough to blow the smoke back out.
My brother was a smoker. He died at 59 from having two major heart attacks, two weeks apart. And he had COPD, too. So he fits the premise Thines laid out, but my mother did not. It just depends, I guess. In general, Thines is quite right.
However, I wouldn't call for it to be banned. As has been said, something has to kill us. If people choose smoking, that should be up to them.
