I was once a smoker, started at an age considered illegal now! How stupid was that. It always felt cool at impressionable age to emulate the peers. It is the peer pressure as you noted in your last sentence. Ditto drinking, hang around these blokes and you will be the odd one out so its better to disassociate!
One of the professors involved in that discovery of stomach Ulcer caused by bacteria that the leading professor famously experimented on himself (forgot his name), did an experiment this year I think on himself with vaping. He was trying to disprove a lot of myth surrounding E-cigarettes and came to the conclusion it is much healthier than smoking a real cigarette! I listened to a radio segment while driving and very interesting. He actually recommends to smokers to switch to this safer method of nicotine absorption! Go figure...
