The reasoning is that people who smoke will die younger, usually after their "productive lifetime" has concluded (where they consume more than they produce), thus being a burden to the state less time.

My grandfather would have seriously skewed those statistics. He lived to a ripe old age of 90 drinking whiskey and smoking a pack of Lucky Strikes (unfiltered) every single day for decades. On more than one occasion doctors warned him the next cigarette could kill him. He proved them wrong for a very long time.

[–] absGeekNZ 2 points 1 year ago

It is very unlikely that he would have skewed the statistics, the immense weight of the people killed early by smoking would overwhelm the very small number of outliers.

The number of years lost by individuals is determined by a huge number of factors, but smoking has been shown to really drag down the number of years that you are likely to achieve.