Some great posts, especially from Spaw and Kendall here. I was a "youth" smoker, who smoked for periods of a few weeks at a time when I was younger. The last time I smoked was in 1981, when I found it hard to stop. I thought, "Sod this, I'll never do it again!" I haven't. But that is only half the truth really. The fact is, that for many years I was a regular pub goer, especially when I was gigging, which obliged me to ingest huge amounts of other people's cigarette smoke. It has certainly affected my voice - although without measuring things clinically, it is impossible to say how much other damage it has done.
I vaguely remember gnu's thread, in which he wanted to ban tobacco. My reaction is that although I completely share his disgust for the stuff, it is no more possible to remove it by legislation than it is to eliminate anything else by law. What gives the tobacco companies the biggest kick in the nuts is to stop them from glamourising their filthy products in public. Heroin pushers are not able to display pictures of sexy young models shooting up - so why should tobacco companies get away with it? As the father of teenage children that makes me really angry.