This is with reference to a since-deleted writeup. I've heard a lot of people giving the arguments above, saying that Smoking is actually good because it takes away the last few miserable years of your life.
The primary assumption here seems to be something like this:If you do not smoke you will live for 70 years, and if you do then you will live for 60 years but at at age 60 your health level will be the same as the health level of a non smoker at 60-That is a manifest fallacy.
Before you die, your body begins to fail. So if you die at 70 your body begins to fail at 65 and if you die at 60 your body begins to fail at 55. So there doesn't seem to a way of getting those years out of your life (except for providence). If you smoke you are still going to go through them.
Also, smoking tends to affect you even when you are in the prime of you your life. I have seen people who were brilliant athletes in school, not being able to run even a single kilometer(without a lot of effort) after a few years of smoking.
Then of course there is the added chance that you would contract a painful disease like lung cancer.
So on the whole maybe its wise to stay off...