The few times I've looked in depth at the studies about the safety of a particular thing, I have found that each study has at least one obvious major flaw that makes the study not necessarily support the conclusion. You could have 10 such studies or 100 and say that lots of studies show that X is safe or Y is dangerous, and the conclusion could be wrong.
This especially common when there's a financial incentive for the people doing or controlling the study to get the result they want, which there usually is. Or for studies that don't get the desired result to not be published.
Such as?
It is however not "lots of studies" saying that opposite, that smoking is in fact ok for you. Which was the claim that was made. It would be fantastic if someone could point me in the direction of all these "lots of studies" where these studies are credible, indepedent scientific studies showing that smoking was ok for you.
Some of the same scientists who were paid off by the tobacco industry to lie to the public about the safety of cigarettes are now working for the food industry to convince the public that food additives are safe.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/17/400391693/ho...
More skepticism than usual seems reasonable.