Genetic factors almost certainly can make a person more sensitive to smoking than the average. I believe I saw this happen in my mother’s family, in which the two non smoking siblings beat the life spans of the two smoking siblings by about two decades, and none of the deaths were due to manslaughter or accident. I always point this out to surviving members of my family when encouraging them not to smoke.
My father, interestingly enough, was one of the very few who had the will power to “take it or leave it.” I saw him smoke literally one cigarette a week, and that was at social events.
I started smoking cigars about four years ago. I have one every two to four weeks at Lit, the cigar bar in the Snoqualmie casino on tuesday nights.
To give an idea of how potent cigarettes can be, I was at a party back in ‘73 and we were passing a joint around. Well, someone rolled the ends of a cigarette to make it look like a joint and handed it to me. It was like a red-out only not in the good way. I almost passed out. I did puke my guts out, though.
Oh, and just to go on record, I smoked my last joint in 1977.