Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General

Excerpt

This report summarizes what is known about smoking among women, including patterns and trends in smoking prevalence, factors associated with smoking initiation and maintenance, the consequences of smoking for women's health, and interventions for smoking cessation and prevention. The report also describes historical and contemporary tobacco marketing targeted to women. Evidence of the health consequences of smoking, which had emerged somewhat earlier among men because of their earlier uptake of smoking, is now overwhelming among women. Tragically, in the face of continually mounting evidence of the enormous consequences of smoking for women's health, the tobacco industry continues to heavily target women in its advertising and promotional campaigns and is now attempting to export the epidemic of smoking to women in areas of the world where the smoking prevalence among females has traditionally been low. The single overarching theme emerging from this report is that smoking is a women's issue.