Does smoking make you shorter?

Factual Questions
1

Dad (who is 75) just came back from visiting his older brother (84) and commented that his brother, who used to be an inch or two taller than Dad, is now a couple of inches shorter. I’ve seen the pictures, and it’s true.

Both Dad and my stepmother asserted that this is because the brother smoked cigarettes for many years.

Can this be true? By what mechanism would smoking cause the disks in in a smoker’s spine to compress more than a non-smokers? (I assume that’s how old folks get shorter over time.) Or are Dad and step-mom just repeating the “smoking stunts your growth” canard we all heard as kids?

BTW, is it even true that smoking stunts kids’ growth?

2

One way to link smoking with loss of height is via osteoporosis (thinning and weakening of the bones). Indeed, cigarette smoking is associated with osteoporosis in both men and women.

Osteoporosis of any cause may lead to compression fractures of the spine and that leads to reduction of previous adult height.

There is some evidence, as well, that smoking may lead to disc disease, but I would expect that to have a much less pronounced effect on height reduction (most of the length of the spine is made up of bone and not disc, so disc narrowing would have less potential to affect height).