Peter Jennings was one of 170,000 Americans diagnosed with lung cancer each year. It is the most deadly form of cancer, responsible for 28 percent of all cancer deaths.

Jennings died Sunday, at the age of 67.

Treatments are few once lung cancer is diagnosed, but there is one very obvious, but often very difficult, way to reduce your risk of getting lung cancer -- quit smoking, reported WCVB-TV in Boston.

News of Jennings' death has been a jolt for some smokers.

"You hear about it all the time, it just never sinks in, but for some reason (Monday) it just sunk in. I've got to do something about that soon," said smoker Kraig Ravioli.

"Now that he's gone, it makes it seem real and I can't get it out of my head today," added smoker Janet Caputo.

Jennings' voice was already weak when he made his last broadcast, a sign that his cancer had advanced.

"Lung cancer metastasizes, or spreads, very quickly so that by the time it's found, it's already spread throughout the body," said Dr. Nancy Rigotti, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Jennings gave up smoking 20 years ago, but had a brief relapse following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"But then he quit again, and I think the message, perhaps his legacy, is that it is possible to quit smoking, and you should keep trying, and it's never too late," Rigotti said.

Helen Hodges said she was a closet smoker for years, only lighting up around other smokers, she recalls.

"I thought it was a dirty habit and I was embarrassed that I smoked," she said.

She finally kicked the habit several years ago, but not soon enough. Last fall she was diagnosed with lung cancer and she didn't see it coming, reported WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.

"One day I just bent down at work and I had an excruciating pain underneath my rib cage," Hodges said. "I went to the emergency room and they told me that I had pneumonia and a tumor in that lung."

Dr. Shakun Malik, who directs the lung cancer program at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., said lung cancer is a disease that often doesn't show warning signs until it's too late.

The long-term survival rate for lung cancer patients is low and the expected five-year survival rate is only 15 percent, medical experts said.

"We have a lot of new drugs and new vaccines coming into trial every day," Malik said.

Leslie Saporetti quit last year after 30 years of smoking cigarettes.

"I was smoking a pack and a half to two packs a day," she said.

Saporetti started smoking when she was 13 -- long before cigarettes had warning labels. Her mother and sister both died of cancer, but even that wasn't enough to get her to stop.

"One day I was looking at my daughter, and I realized she was as old as I was when I started smoking, and I just couldn't imagine her holding a cigarette and smoking herself," she said.

Saporetti got help at a smoking cessation study at Massachusetts General Hospital -- a combination of medication and counseling -- and lowered her risk of developing lung cancer.

"A lot of smokers think, 'It's too late. I've smoked too long, too heavily. I'm too old. It doesn't matter,'" Rigotti said. "But that's not the case. On average, when a smoker quits, they gain 10 years of life. That's a lot."

"I will never smoke again," Saporetti said.

She hasn't smoked in almost 10 months. She said that quitting was the hardest thing she's ever done, and she has some advice for smokers of any age.

"I think they should just know that it is really hard to stop, but it can be done, and that there are a lot of programs to help them and to just keep trying," she said.

Several new stop-smoking drugs are under development, but there are ways now available to quit. Call the American Cancer Society and speak to a health professional directly about the options at (800) ACS-2345.