It's a lot for sure. Huge number. It's just kind of less than you would have thought. And keep in mind that the category of "smokers" has both those who smoke a pack a week and those who smoke 5 packs per day.

Even if you smoke a pack a day for 20 years, your risk of getting lung cancer - while way higher than someone who has never smoked, is still surprisingly low in an absolute sense. I would have thought it'd be like 80% or something. Not the case. It turns out that as far as smokers go, a pack a day is "light."

All of the other health effects, however, are honestly a much more compelling reason to quit. It's easy to brush off an elevated but still unlikely death by cancer. But it's not like you're fine and then you just up and die one day when you're 85. That honestly wouldn't be so bad at all. Much more common is that you'll live much of your life with weird chest pains, coughing every morning, getting out of breath going on walks, etc. Planning your life around smoke breaks and not smelling like smoke before going to the office or on a date, keeping your car/house from smelling like smoke, etc. Your QOL goes way down long before you get cancer - if you ever even do.

That was what motivated me to quit smoking when I was 26. And uh...again when I was 32 (though I quit for 2 years in the middle). I could feel that I was a smoker, and that was scary. You're not supposed to feel sick when you take a deep breath.