Why don't you ask someone who 25 years ago used to work in an asbestos mine about long lag periods? They are common for many types of cancers. If your lungs are coated with tar from smoking, they just don't become uncoated 25 years later. You still have large amounts of carcinogens in you, and they can cause cell damage at any time.
And how can they blame it on smoking and not, say, air pollution or Three Mile Island?
Because researchers can screen for air pollution or three mile island. If you were to take two identical populations -- say 50,000 people who never smoked and 50,000 people who smoked for 10-20 years and then quit 25 years ago -- and you normalize both populations for differences in likely exposure to air pollution and radiation, you'll still see an increase in lung cancer rates in the smoker group. This is how studies are done, and they can conclusively pinpoint smoking.
They pay a lot of taxes for that right, and I, for one, am grateful!
I talked to a former boss of mine last month. He did give up smoking after a 40 year habit. Now he points out that having to be on oxygen is like being under house arrest. He cannot go to far. He is trying to get a transportable version so that he can go out of the house for more than a couple of hours at a time.
And idiocy - just like your posts.
"If your lungs are coated with tar from smoking, they just don't become uncoated 25 years later. You still have large amounts of carcinogens in you, and they can cause cell damage at any time."
That's not what your co-horts at the quit smoking sites tell us. Are you with them or not? Could you folks please keep your stories straight.