“Survival from age 35 for continuing cigarette smokers and lifelong non-smokers among UK male doctors born 1900-1930, with percentages alive at each decade of age”.
This legendary paper followed cohorts born in the 1920s and later. In older cohorts, with greater consumption and more dangerous cigarettes, about two-thirds of smokers died prematurely. In later cohorts about one-half died prematurely an average of 10 years.