This just in:

Researchers in Scotland assessed the mental abilities of 465 people who had been enrolled in an IQ test at the age of 11 in 1947.

The volunteers were tested again between 2000 and 2002, when they were 64 years old. Roughly half of them were smokers.

"Smokers performed significantly worse in five different cognitive tests than did both former smokers and those who had never smoked," the British weekly New Scientist reported.

They do not yet understand the mechanism that causes this, but some suspect free-radicals (unstable atoms with an unpaired electron) that are unleashed by the chemicals in tobacco smoke.

Of course the 'Free Radicals' would truly be a great name for a rock band. (I can already imagine their groupies, too.)

In other news:

Nursing home staff paid tribute to a 105-year old British woman who had smoked since the age of 15 by cremating her with a packet of cigarettes and laying a large floral cigarette on her coffin.

Marie Ellis died - of natural causes - at the Eaton Lodge Nursing Home in Kent, southeast England, in early December and was cremated on Tuesday, clutching a packet of her favorite Benson and Hedges cigarettes.

I believe that smoking is complicit in the onset of many major health problems in many people. However, it is also an amazing fact that it seems to have absolutely zero detrimental effect on the health of some.