They breathed the same tar fumes from the roads, the same pollution from cars and coal fires, etc., but it was considered not ladylike to smoke. Smoking was almost exclusively a male habit. Ok, a confounding factor could be that men worked in heavy industry with the attendant dust, chemicals, etc., but there were a lot of men that worked in white collar jobs that were subjected to equivalent levels of pollution, etc. that women were and could have been used as a more representative sampling.

But the old “My grandfather was killed by cigarettes — he smoked 100 a day from age 12 and died age 97 by being hit by a bus going to the shop to buy his daily ration” argument will never convince anyone that doesn’t want to be convinced.

Equally, my grandfather went through WW1 in the Army in the trenches without a scratch by enemy action, so, using that argument, war is benign.

Me? The probability is that smoking does indeed cause premature mortality, so I don’t smoke. YMMV and all that.

What about the stress that is relieved by smoking, the easier socialization, making friends, etc?

How many mass murderers smoked?

The nurses study [20,000 nurses studied for twenty years] concluded that one of the five factors that led to good health was not smoking cigs.

Cigarette smoking too raises the blood pressure and contributes to heart disease, hardening of the arteries at an accelerated pace.