Gaffer Tape said:

Interestingly, that's the reason my former roommate gave me for why she had smoked when she was younger. According to her, since your body just recovers from it anyway, why not enjoy yourself in your twenties by smoking? I admit I didn't get it. And I suppose that precludes that you will stop at some point...

I go for a full physical every summer - CBC, stress test, EKG, prostate exam, etc. During the last physical, I was talking to my doctor about the smoking info\chart\timeline she has in there. She said a person isn't considered truly a non-risk for smoking-related lung cancer until they've been out of a smoking environment for 15 years.

She said that while it's true that some things start to heal the same day, that there are other things that take your body much longer to repair. That means I wasn't really out of danger until I was 33 years old (moved out when I was 18). Man, that's a sobering thought of what my mother subjected us to. Honestly, that's something I never gave her a pass on. That was selfish on her part. It's fine if she wanted to ignore the dangers for herself, but she ignored them for me also.