Two responses...

... with which I cheat by putting them both in the same post:

[in response to Graham Quirk's "Anyone got a light?"]:

The way I see it, since we've all gotta die anyways, we may as well die from something we've enjoyed in the meantime.

How many people make themselves unnecessarily miserable with neurotic avoidance habits only to die of something equally gruesome anyways?

Let's face it: there are very few pleasant ways to die (and those few require a lot of planning and investment...). What's more, we are all pretty much guaranteed some kind of cancer if we hang around long enough. That's just how we roll in the West nowadays, with our grotesquely prolonged lifespans and the inevitable decrepitudes that accompany them... but that's a whole other issue.

The point is, the prospect of lung cancer doesn't bother me nearly as much as those of, say, Alzheimer's, or progressive arthritis, or a hundred other hideous degenerative problems that old people are expected to suck up as part of the 'benefits' of Older Age.

Also, just to nitpick: a list of famous people who smoked prior to the early 70s is, like... EVERYBODY, man. But then, that may just serve to reinforce your point...

[and in response to Sam Cattell's "Hi, my name's Sam and I'm a smoker"]:

Good point, which also applies to life in general: it's FULL of offensive shit, and most of us manage to just deal with it without publicly twisting our knickers into knots. I'm profoundly offended by stupid people, for example; if I let that get to me, I'd have an embolism every time I leave the house.

I think that in order to live here on Earth with other human beings, you kinda need to accept early on that nobody has some kind of nonsensical Right Not To Be Offended, or else life will be very unkind.