Let's see: at least one in four smokers will die from cancer caused by smoking, and these are not only various types of lung cancer, at least 80% of which are caused by smoking, but also to a greater or lesser extent: laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma, esophageal adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma, pancreatic ductal carcinoma, gastric adenocarcinoma, hepatocellular carcinoma and some others, the connection to which has not yet been proven. At the same time, smokers still have an average population risk of dying from cancer of about 10%. Therefore, roughly added, the risk of death from cancer for a person who smokes for more than 10 years (on average, a pack of cigarettes per day) is about 35-40%.
https://www.cancer.org/healthy/stay-away-from-tobacco/health-risks-of-tobacco/health-risks-of-smoking-tobacco.htmlIt is also worth remembering that chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema, various ischemic pathologies are almost guaranteed.
However, all this harm is not due to nicotine, in the first place, which by itself can even reduce the risk of certain diseases, such as Parkinson's disease (
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-88910-4), but due to tobacco combustion products, such as benzopyrene, benzanthracene, acetaldehyde, and others.
This all leads to the fact that 50% of smokers die prematurely and, mostly painfully, due to the consequences of smoking.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2928221/Well, people who say that they smoke all their lives and everything is fine, you are just lucky to be not in these 50%, but this is a lottery, not a pattern.