Excerpted from A Caregiver's Handbook for Advanced-Stage Huntington's Disease by Jim Pollard. Certainly a very large portion of people with HD smoke cigarettes.
Smoking becomes symbolic of independence.
Smokers and their caregivers are faced with a number of problems. Some folks with HD have an altered sense of hot and cold. Their fingers are often burned lighting cigarettes or smoking them down to the butt. Impaired judgement can make them unaware of the danger of burns to clothing, ashtray fires, or lighting the cigarettes of friends who are themselves unsafe smokers. The movement disorder makes it unsafe to use and dispose of matches and lighters.