Now come on Dan, don't hold back. Are you implying that you don't smoke? I started smoking when I was 10 years old and quit just before my 50th birthday. I'm 68 now. I have had some bad things from smoking, chronic Bronchitis (COPD, minor), but other then that I've been lucky. My lungs are still good and I was, at one point, a three pack a day smoker. Like I said, lucky. When COPD started to bother me I didn't even know what it was, but, I would have these really awful coughing spells. So severe that they caused me to have abdominal muscle spasm and even a dislocated rib. That was after I had quit, in fact, a good 10 years after I had quit before the COPD was diagnosed. I was given an inhaler about 5 years ago and use it as a maintenance tool since that time. I have not had one bad coughing session since then and to the point that I hardly ever cough anymore. At my last physical I was pulling a 98% on my oxygen/lung function.
It is a good thing that people have quit smoking, but, in all fairness, when I was a kid everyone smoked. Pregnant mothers smoked and, honestly, there was no a huge number of babies with problems that came from that scenario. I'm sure it existed, but, it wasn't a huge problem. People still get lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, esophageal cancer, strokes, more asthma then their was back then, colon, cervix, pancreatic, liver, stomach, leukemia, life time child deformities and stillbirths with people who have never had a cigarette. Although all of that has decreased, a great deal of the situation is directly connected with ones gene pool.