You missed the point. Even if there is a reduced risk of dementia diseases, there is a huge risk of cancer and other serious diseases.

I did address the alleged harmfulness of tobacco smoking. That is precisely what the references #1 to #6 in my initial post deal with. Check for example the review article given as #1 above, "The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking" by Johnstone & Finch. It is fairly short, precise and with exact citations to papers & studies, while remaining quite readable. The Colby's book (the #2 link) is much more detailed and covers all the alleged harms very thoroughly, while again being very readable.

As to the amalgam analogy you suggested, the situation is precisely the opposite. Namely, note that the same actors (FDA, CDC, pharmaceuticals, AMA, WHO,...) who are peddling the alleged safety of amalgams & thimerosal are also the guys peddling the alleged harmfulness of tobacco smoke and downplaying its therapeutic and protective properties. Tobacco, which is a medicinal plant cultivated and honed for thousands of years for its healing powers, is a natural and traditional health remedy (e.g. smoking was compulsory for students in the most eminent British schools), thus a competitor to pharmaceutical industry products. The Big Pharma, aided by their bureaucratic stooges (in FDA, CDC, EPA,...) and mass media shills, is is attacking all natural & traditional remedies, not just tobacco. The attack on the latter is the most vicious one among them all precisely because tobacco is the most powerful and most beneficial traditional remedy among them all, hence the Big Pharma stands to gain the most from its banishment.

We need to keep in mind, though, that there is a huge difference between the junk supermarket cigarettes (which are not made from tobacco leaf at all, but mostly from reconstituded debris & scraps, rolled into sheets, then artificially colored & flavored) and the traditionally (organically) grown, additive free pure tobacco leaf, used the oldfashioned ways (e.g. pipes or filterless cigarettes smoked through long cigarette holders). It's the latter that is the sacred healing plant passed to us by the Native American shamans.

This is really the same as the difference between the denatured, pesticide and additive laden supermarket junk foods and the organically grown, additive free traditionally prepared foods.