Here's our basic disconnect:

Not for nothing, but arguing that smoking doesn't shorten your lifespan...

I'm not arguing that, I was pointing out that the numbers didn't look incredibly damning at face value. What I am arguing, in general, is that the numbers reported are propagandized to make some things sound more severe than they are. For instance, you won't see "you have a 7% of having a heart attack as a smoker", you'll see "you have 2.3x more likely chance".

While accurate, depending on what you're talking about, it may not be meaningful.

Edit:

To give you an example, they talk about second hand smoke with one of these relative comparisons. Relative comparisons are important but only in the context of your overall likelihood. Consider the following statement, which is entirely made up:

I've had sex with 1 blonde and 30 brunettes. Therefore, if your sister is a brunette, its 3000% more likely that I've slept with her than if she were blonde (let's pretend for a moment there is an equal split between blondes and brunettes). By presenting it that way, I'm obfuscating how incredibly low the chances of me having had sex with your sister by random coincidence, out of all the women on earth, is.

I'm just using that as an example, I'm not inferring your chance of having lung cancer is slim to non-existent. I'm saying there is a lot of propaganda around the way it is presented in the name of sensationalism. They will say to you that you are 4x more likely to get lung cancer as a smoker than a non-smoker. What they won't say is that roughly translates to 1 in 8, or 12.5% chance. If you look at it as 1 in 8, you might think your odds are fair that you won't get lung cancer. So they won't present it that way.

Now at this junction, you can disagree with what I'm saying if you want. You can say you haven't noticed it or whatever. But do me a favor and don't pretend like you don't understand what the argument I'm making is.