What I meant to say in my previous (and very long) appeal to my smoking friends: lung cancer develops over a number of years (usually 20-25 years after someone has first started smoking) because smoking is an ongoing assult on your lung cells that causes damage and then mutation over time.
The risk of lung cancer steadily declines after cessation of smoking, so that after 10-15 years, it is almost equal to that of nonsmokers -- if you have smoked less than 20 years.
This means that even someone who has smoked 15-20 years has a very good chance of avoiding lung cancer -- if they stop now. Like right now. After 20-25 years of regular smoking, there is a significant increase in cancer diagnosis (though, the incidence of death from lung cancer begins to diverge from the nonsmoking poulation at 10 pack-years). So if you are one of those friends of mine (or someone else's friend) who think that they have been smoking "too long" to make a difference if you quit right now, you couldn't be more wrong. Every day you give your lungs to recover, gives your body a better chance of fighting off that very painful cancer. (And if you hate the thought of getting cancer anyway, even if after you quit, just tell yourself that if you are diagnosed and counting down the days, you can smoke as many cigarrettes as you want.)
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