PLOS Nov 18 2025 An analysis of data from almost two dozen long-term studies finds that even low-intensity smokers have a substantially higher risk of heart disease and death compared to people who never smoked, even years after they quit. Michael Blaha of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, USA, and colleagues report these findings November 18 th in the open-access journal  PLOS Medicine . Previous research has shown that smoking cigarettes increases a