Counterpoint:

In fact, you know, on one occasion [smoking] saved my life. I was in an airplane, a man was getting a seat for me, and I said, “Get me a seat in the smoking part, because if I can’t smoke I shall die.” And sure enough there was an accident, a bad accident,2 and all the people in the non-smoking part of the plane were drowned, and the people in the smoking part jumped into the Norwegian fjord where we’d landed, and we were saved. So I owe my life to smoking.

-- Bertrand Russell