I know a few smokers (tobacco only) who lived into their 90s, and some of them were exposed to much worse in their daily lives when they were young (leaded gasoline, solvents, etc.), but I suspect those may be genetic outliers.
To be fair lung cancer as the biggest concern to smoking was just the advertising boogeyman to convince people to stop smoking, the vast majority of smokers die from heart attack and stroke, not lung cancer. But telling some 14 year old kid that they might just drop dead at 55 of a heart attack isn't exactly convincing, to them that is old as fuck and just dropping dead from a heart attack sounds like one of the best ways to go at the time.
