Earlier quoted context omitted.
Evolution doesn't have a high or low state, or a linear progression. It's a natural process that is random and responsive to environment changes, not progressing towards an ideal.
If mutation is the engine of evolution, an increase in mutation should mean an increase in the speed of evolution. Obviously not on the scales we're talking about here, but the premise doesn't seem too unsound, external pressures being equal.
So, the mutations discussed in the article have nothing to do with evolution, because they are somatic, and not passed on to offsprig. But even if smoking caused germ cell line mutations, it's also important to note that "highly evolved" is a mostly nonsensical phrase that has no real meaning, and there is absolutely no guarantee that any individual germ line mutations would confer a selective advantage to the off-spring- in fact, the majority of the time, specific mutations are neutral or harmful. Thus, even if smoking did increase the mutation rate in the germ line of a smoker, any given smoker kid would probably just have more problems than benefits. And because mutation rate is (maybe this is somewhat controversial) a phenotype that can and has evolved into itself, changing it artificially through smoking would likely result in a net reduction in "evolvability" as it has been called. Anyways these are all long term (and I mean LONG) population level effects and have nothing to do with individuals being "more evolved".
Just trying to make the point that the original assumption was three times removed from a sound understanding of evolution and showed some pretty big misconceptions.
