Smoking science is still pretty new and now we know all the stuff that happens when you smoke, a lot less people have picked it up/quit. But before that smoking seemed to be something literally everyone did. So my question is that since pretty much everyone smoked, how common was lung cancer/other smoking related illnesses?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4v3wok/was_acceptance_of_the_lung_cancer_and_smoking/ /u/mkwiat's comment gives insight on the history of associating cigarettes with lung cancer and mentions a study which notes an increase in lung cancer between 1927 - 1947.
As a follow-up question to this, how did working class Europeans afford tobacco? By my understanding it would have been a rather exotic plant if it had to be imported from the Americas.