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The story is not all that unusual for people in that region of the world. In 1970s there was a report in British Medical Journal [Dr. G.Y. Caldwell "Natural curing of tobacco and lung cancer", BMJ Feb 26 1977, v1. p580] about Semai people of Malaysia where children start smoking at age two, as a rite of passage from nursing. To the complete shock of the medical researchers, the full medical examination, including chest X-rays, of all 12000 Semai found them in a remarkably good health and could not find a single lung cancer.

Interestingly, in our western world during the golden age of British Empire, smoking was compulsory for the students of their elite boy schools (for refs see "The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking" by J. R. Johnstone (PhD), P.D.Finch, (Prof. Em. Mathematical Statistics, Monash).

If you wish to follow this white rabbit a bit deeper and get a glimpse at the upcoming smoking heresy, there is much more info with numerous scientific references in a recent thread in imminst.org forum (life-extension, nootropics, health) titled, of of all things:

"Smoking is good for you"

which I started. As expected, the pandemonium broke lose when all these medically and scientifically well educated health fanatics jumped in to refute the claims (many members are grad students & researchers in biological & medical fields).

Each paper they brought up in support of their antismoking position either backfired (showing upon closer inspection that the findings were exactly the opposite than what they appeared to be from the paper abstracts) or it didn't show anything at all (the usual antismoking junk science). Watch them squirm as all the hard science (experiments, lab analysis) kept going the "wrong" way.

Here are some highlights of the "debate" (no contest actually, it wasn't even close; I post as "nightlight"):

1. Dogs exposed to radon or radon+smoke: 5% of smoking dogs and 37% of non-smoking dogs got lung cancers.

2. Massive National Cancer Institute sponsored experiments that backfired terribly, setting back the NCI's workplace smoking bans agenda for more than a decade.

3. The crowning experiments of six decades of antismoking "science", the pinnacle (2004, 2005) -- again backfired badly, as they always do -- at the end, more than twice as many smoking animals alive than non-smoking ones.

4. Self-medication with tobacco

5. Common genes for lung cancer & smoking

(Fisher suspected this to be the case in 1950s, he also suggested self-medication possibility, see page 163, where he compares taking cigarettes away from some poor chap to taking the walking stick from a blind man.[pdf])

6. Hazards of quitting (triggers lung cancers in animal experiments)

7. Emphysema/COPD - smoking protective rather than cause

8. How does antismoking "science" lie with stats (or how to scientifically "prove" that -- Prozac causes depression -- using the master method of antismoking "science")

9. Heart attacks from SHS myths (a 'friend saying Boo' is more "hazardous" for your heart than SHS)

10. Glycotoxins/AGE in tobacco smoke -- backfires badly

11. Smoking protects against cancers (reversal of values in cancer state and another common sleight of hand), Smoking vs Caloric Restrictions (and on fundamental wrong-headedness of C.R.)

12. More on anti-carcinogenicity of tobacco smoke and how to translate Orwellian antismoking "science" to real science

13. ** why take a chance

14. Smoking and diabetes, insulin sensitivity -- another "proof" backfires

15. How to prove that 'Lifting weights is harmful for muscles' - pinhole vision sleight of hand of antismoking "science" illustrated

16. Oxidative stress, breast cancer, "randomizing non-randomized variables" sleight of hand -- more antismoking junk science claims turned upside-down by facts of hard science

17. Can one replicate the health benefits of tobacco smoke (the short list given) using supplements and pharmaceuticals? Even if it were possible, can one do it for < $1 day (cost for a pack of roll-your-own cigarettes with natural, additive free tobacco)?

18. Who knows more about biochemistry of life and its molecular engineering -- one little cell in your little toe or all the biochemists and molecular biologists in the world taken together? Is "Sickness Industry" good for your health?