>>The so-called concise, laconic, expression requires more thinking than the verbose one. Just like one guy said "english language has all the tools it needs to avoid ambiguity" - sure does, because it needs them. But it needs them precisely because it is easy to be ambiguous in it, and to use these tools one first has to be aware when they may be needed. Which is often not the case, and we have an everyday festival of unintended consequences.

I know you enjoy this meme, but there's no ambiguity in the statement you're dissecting. ;-)

>>Or the one which amused me endlessly, "the surgeon general has decided that quitting smoking now greatly reduces your risk of cancer". I remember I had several questions...

Yes, but you're willfully misinterpreting (as well as omitting caps, I suspect.) ;-)

Placed after the modal or first axillary verb, "now" is an adverb of time that applies to "quitting smoking." In addition, "has" followed by a past participle is called present perfect tense that usually denotes continuation of an existing state- except for some words like "decided!" So if they intended to say it's a recent decision, it's better expressed as

The Surgeon General has now decided that quitting smoking greatly reduces your risk of cancer.

Plus there's context: the advice fluctuates, but stopping smoking has been the advice for at least 40 years to my certain knowledge. Nothing "now" about that. Current thought is that within 2-5 years of stopping smoking, risk of smoking-related disease drops to little different from the general population. The trick is to stop now rather than later because the risk rises so dramatically that stopping later makes it less likely you can make it through 5 years unscathed. Whenever you stop: if you make it through 5 years after that, you're not facing the usual catastrophic risk profile associated with smoking.