I recall John Cleese (of "Monty Python", "Fawlty Towers" etc) in an advertisement against smoking.

"This is how much ash someone who smokes twenty cigarettes a day makes". (Empties an urn onto a table.) "Of course, not all of them are cremated. Some of them are buried."



Of course, the ill effects of smoking can be freakishly random. My paternal grandfather smoked a pipe almost non-stop, all his adult life. He nearly made it to ninety, still quite hale, before succumbing to something which had nothing to do with smoke inhalation. My father smoked one or two cigarettes a fortnight, and suffered chronic bronchitis for years. If there is one reason I never started smoking, it is childhood memories of being shoulder-charged out of the bathroom doorway on some mornings as my father rushed to cough up the entire contents of his thorax.


My brother stopped smoking entirely when his eldest child (a daughter) was born. Perhaps that's why she became a vegan ?