For decades, the
tobacco industry has targeted women and girls
with its marketing and advertising, with disastrous
consequences for
women's health. As a result, 165,000 women die of tobacco-caused disease each year. Since
1987, lung
cancer has been
the leading cancer killer among women. Heart
disease is the overall leading cause of death
among women,
and smoking accounts for one out of every five deaths from
heart disease. For many of the diseases caused by smoking,
research has shown
that women are more at risk than men. And
women also suffer gender-specific risks from
tobacco,
including harm to
their reproductive health and complications during pregnancy.
Smoking among both men and women decreased gradually as the dangers of smoking became widely known. However,
smoking rates have hardly declined at all in the last
ten years; and women who once smoked at
half the rate of men are
now almost as
likely to smoke as men. Recent increases in smoking by high school girls suggest that the problem
may
worsen. Gender
differences in the cultural and social
influences on smoking, consumption patterns,
health effects, and
responses to
tobacco marketing and promotion require that tobacco use among women be considered separately from
general
discussions on the topic. Smoking by women is a serious, widespread public health problem
that must be
addressed.
Twenty-two percent
of American adult women are current smokers,
compared to 26 percent of men. Caucasian and
African American
women smoke in roughly equal proportions (23%
vs. 21%). American Indian women (38%)
smoke
at much higher
rates, while much smaller proportions of Hispanic (13%) and Asian (10%) women smoke.
Smoking prevalence is higher among women with 9-11 years of education (32.9%) than women with 13-15 years of
education (22.8%)
and three times higher than women with 16 or
more years of education (11.2%)
In 1997, smoking among female high school seniors reached a
19-year high of 35.2 percent, declining to 29.7 percent
in
2000.
A report published
by the
American
Journal of Public Health
shows that girls
have an easier time buying cigarettes than
boys, even at the
youngest ages.
Smoking among girls and young women has increased dramatically in the 1990s. From 1991
to 1999, smoking among high
school girls
increased from 27 to 34.9 percent. Altogether in the United States, more than 22
million adult women and 1.5
million girls
currently smoke, putting their health at significant risk.
Cardiovascular
Disease:
Cardiovascular
disease, including heart attacks and strokes, is the overall leading cause of
death
among women, and smoking
accounts for one of every five deaths from cardiovascular disease. Altogether,
cardiovascular
disease kills
more than half a million women each year, more
than the next 14 causes of death combined.
Women who
smoke are two to
six times as likely to suffer a heart attack as non-smoking women, and
women smokers have a higher
risk of
developing cardiovascular disease than men do.
Lung
Cancer:
Lung cancer is
the leading cancer killer among women, and
smoking causes 82% of all lung cancer
cases
among women. Lung cancer death rates among women
increased by more than 400% between 1960 and 1990. By 1987,
lung cancer had
passed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths among women. Women who smoke
at the same
rate as men are also at greater risk of developing lung
cancer than men.