[User23]

I believe smoking increases your risk of getting lung cancer by about 20%[1]. It's definitely significant, but plenty of regular smokers manage to die from something else. I'm pretty happy about the repression of public smoking though, because I find the odor of cigarette tobacco revolting and also prefer to not have my risk of lung cancer even moderately increased by second-hand smoke.

Annoyingly, it's hard to find good figures on relative risk for smokers and non-smokers, probably because of the current public health fad of dissembling to attempt to encourage desired behaviors. All I can find is that for the total population lifetime chance is 1/15 for men and 1/17 for women[2], with some weasel words about smoking increasing risk, but no actual quantification.

Edit: I appreciate the replies, but note that none of the sources cited actually list any meaningful quantifiable data. So I dug a bit more and found this[3]. It indicates that the effect is largely dose dependent and only really shows up in smokers of ten years or more. While p=.05 might fly for psychology studies, it's not a convincing bar for serious science. On the other hand the decade and longer smokers show a very respectable p=.001. For the heaviest smokers it looks like a bit over a 5x increase. Assuming continuity, there also exists some level of moderate smoking where my proposed 20% increased risk is accurate and even more limited levels of smoking where the risk is not appreciably higher than not smoking. In fact the data indicate that former smokers who quit for more than ten years actually have lower risk of lung cancer than never smokers! Surely that's some kind of noise, but it still goes to show.

[1] It's true that most people with lung cancer are or were smokers. But it's also true that most people with lung cancer are over 65, and they're from a period where most everyone was a smoker or exposed to smoke regularly. That's a pretty major confound. Over the next few decades we should get better data due to the relative decline in smoking making the effects of choosing to smoke clearer.

[2] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/lung-cancer/about/key-statisti...

[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

[goda90]

I think you misinterpreted 20x as 20%. CDC say smoking increases your chances of getting lung cancer by 15-30 times[0] vs someone who doesn't.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm

[tayistay]

Dunno where you got the 20% stat, but it’s totally wrong. From cancer.org:

> The risk of lung cancer for people who smoke is many times higher than for people who don't smoke. The longer you smoke and the more packs a day you smoke, the greater your risk.

MANY TIMES