Told ya...
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/23/smoke-fags-save-lives/
Capstan Full Strength here we go then
You need to have built up a good few decades of phlegm for it to be effective, you newbies are fucked
A business opportunity for you - sell phlegm futures
Remember your first car? Mine was an Austin 1300. Nick's was a model T-Ford. Anyhoo... you rushed down to Halfords and bought a sponge to clean it with. That was a young lung. You washed the bodywork but got very wary near the wheels were the caked on brake-dust and road oil would contaminate it. So you bought another and used the older one to clean the grubby bits below. Your new sponge remained pristine. The older one by now was a bit black in places with accumulated shite but was still good enough for your dirty bits.
Your new sponge still looks great, but it's been accumulating dust, tiny bits of grit and all sorts of abrasives on it, so every time you wash the car, little scratches go in and the paintwork is eventually ruined. Any type of nastiness now gets in. Your pristine lung is now a problem.
Your old sponge, however, sits, unloved in the bottom on an old bucket somewhere and still only gets used for the bad bits. You know it is dirty, so you rinse it and squeeze it more - like coughing with phlegm - and the film on it makes it easier for the nasty stuff to fall off or not attach properly in the first place.
Smoking is an irritant that causes phlegm. For some people it goes rogue and causes cancer, but nowhere near as many as it is blamed for.
The ancient Amazonians smoked tobacco for centuries - it was thought to prevent fungal infections in the jungle - and not one of the exhumed bodies ever showed any lung cancers. But there again, they never had to inhale burnt petrol/diesel/Jet A-1 etc. I believe that if you are going to get a cancer, you'll get it through your genetics. I also believe that certain substances may trigger more than others and tobacco isn't one of them. Margarine I'm not so sure about.