Vaping is almost certainly less harmful to your health than smoking cigarettes, since it doesn’t contain bits of burned-up tobacco leaf (the cancer-causing “tar” in cigarettes). But if that fact leads smokers to start vaping, but then they don’t quit smoking, what good was the vaping?

When you quit smoking, your body begins to function differently. In the short term, your heart rate and blood pressure adjust themselves. As the years go by, your risks for cancer and heart disease get closer to those of non-smokers. This calculator can give you specific dates for when all these things happen if you were to quit right now.

Android/iOS: Smoking is one of the best-known ways to poison your lungs, but good old fashioned air pollution plays a role, too. An app called Shit, I Smoke! (free on iOS and Android) puts your local pollution in terms you can understand.

Joining us late? No worries! Here are all of today's big Lifehacker stories that you might have missed.

I read an email the other day that contained this bummer of a statement: "Cigarettes are the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users."

It's not news, but it's true.

There are plenty of traditional holiday meals to think about as we near the end of the month. Rib roasts, even more turkey, a sporadic ham or wellington. But I'm a bigger fan of lamb - and not just frenched racks, but whole legs. And with the weather warming up, I think it's high time we talk about smoking.

Dear Lifehacker, I've been a smoker since I was 14. I'm now 22 and I consider myself to be smoking hot (pun intended). I've heard that smoking cigarettes can age you prematurely. However, judging by the before-and-after photos I've seen, most of these people were pretty rough to begin with! Will smoking really ruin my good looks, or will I just go from a 9 to an 8.5? (I whiten my teeth professionally, so that's not a problem.)

Knowing the damage that smoking does to your body in the long term doesn't make it any easier to quit, but there are surprisingly some immediate beneficial effects that happen just hours after you stop smoking.

It isn't just heavy smokers that are setting themselves up for a future of cancer and heart disease. A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine shows that people who averaged just one cigarette per day still had a 64 per cent chance of dying early, compared to nonsmokers.

Want to try smoking some barbecue but don't want to shell out for a meat smoker? You can make a relatively decent smoker with little more than cardboard box. Of course it won't be quite as effective as the real deal, but it's a fun experiment.

You already know all of the health risks of smoking. Friends and loved ones have nagged you to quit. But you haven't been able to kick the habit. Perhaps this context will help renew your efforts: See the huge chunk of money you'll save when you finally quit.

Smoking meats is a great way to inject complexity and flavour to the cheapest of cuts. If you're looking to host a different kind of barbecue, this infographic explains the process for a variety of cooking surfaces.

Everybody's got an opinion on e-cigarettes: ask ten people about their safety and you'll get ten different answers. Fierce debates can rage because there just isn't a lot of data yet, but there are a few things experts can agree on. Let's look at the details.

There aren't many of us who don't have some bad habit we'd like to quit: smoking, sweets, shopping, nail-biting, porn, excessive checking of social media, other distractions. The problem is that we think we don't have the willpower, faced with past evidence of failure after failure when we've tried to quit before.

Smokers in NSW will be prohibited from lighting up in outdoor dining areas from today onward, and it might be worth taking a few steps to the side -- those in breach can be fined $300.

Earlier this year, my fiance decided to quit his heavy smoking. Of course, I wanted to help, but as someone who's never had a true addiction, I had no idea how to make it easier on him. After months of living with someone who finally kicked the habit, here's what I've learned.

"Have you ever been hypnotised before?" she asked while scribbling on a clipboard.
No I hadn't.
"It's not like TV at all. It’s not going to be like that."

A scientific study has discovered that it's more difficult to quit alcohol if you also smoke. Apparently, the receptors in the brain linked to alcohol withdrawal are effected by frequent tobacco use, causing cravings to remain high. In other words, wannabe teetotalers should consider quitting smoking first.

Whether you're smoking cigarettes, cigars or something a bit more "exotic", coughing is both an inevitable consequence as well as hugely annoying. Help it go down a bit smoother with some honey.