Health and Suppliments

The tobacco industry is now trying to lure new customers in the form of young women after half of all men in some developing countries are already hooked on cigarettes.

Efforts are made by the industry in the form of flavored products and glossy feminine packaging meant to attract young women to take on tobacco.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

“Tobacco companies target women and girls with aggressive and seductive advertising that exploits ideas of independence, emancipation, sex appeal, slimness, glamour and beauty,” Johanna Birckmayer, director of international research at the U.S.-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in an e-mail. They are “successfully reaching the young consumers they hope to addict,” said Birckmayer, who was not involved in the research.

WHO has estimated that the rate of female smokers worldwide will double by 2025, from about 9 percent in 2007. The current male smoking rate of about 40 percent has peaked and is slowly starting to decline.

Increases among female smokers have been documented in a number of countries, including India, Singapore, the Ukraine and Russia, said Timothy O’Leary, a WHO spokesman in Geneva. The gap among adolescent boys and girls who start smoking is also narrowing, with about 7 percent of girls lighting up compared to 12 percent of boys globally, according to WHO. And in about half of 151 countries surveyed in another study, roughly as many girls were smoking as boys, O’Leary said.

The survey was conducted in 14 countries in 2008-2009 with funding from the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use.

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