My mother's smoked for over 40 years, like many she started in school at a time where the health impacts were not fully known. Now I worry for her health all the time, I see those horrific pictures they put on the packets (Here in the UK) of normal lungs compared to a smoker of 30 years or so, and I worry so much about the state of her own. I dread to think about how it's damaging her and "how long left" she has before she gets sick. I worry that it's inevitable; however long it takes.
It's not like I've never tried to persuade her to give them up, I believe there's many good options out there now. My uncle also smoked for many years and gave up with the help of these prescription pills he got off the NHS (Free) and I always hoped my mother would go down the same route. Only to be disappointed; "Life's too stressful for me not to smoke" or "Why quit a habit of a lifetime" or "It's too late for any of that now", It's her own choice she smokes and doesn't have any interest of quitting, despite the many reasons TO quit. Over the years since I was young I've come to accept this is just something she does, the effort to convince her has slowly faded but the worry is still there.
I think I'm the only one in my family that has never smoked; all my childhood I've been around smokers and I despise the smell, to me it's what cancer smells like. My nan died of a smoking related disease when I was young, my aunt had cancer due to smoking - thankfully something she got through, it took THAT for her to stop smoking. And I believe it'll take something as horrific in order to force my mother to stop. I don't really like Cigarettes at all.