Smoking and Women

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• Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. It is responsible for about 1 out of every 5 deaths. Cigarette smoking kills an estimated 178,000 women in the United States each year.
• Although there are fewer adult women who smoke than men, the gender gap is decreasing as the number of male smokers declines at a rate faster than the number of female smokers.
• Women may be more adversely affected by smoking then men. Women may be at higher risk for developing smoking-related cancer, heart disease, and lung disease then their male counterparts.
• Women may be more responsive than men to non-nicotine stimuli associated with smoking, such as social and behavioral cues.
• Women may be less successful than men in quitting smoking, although they join smoking cessation groups more often than men. Women also appear to experience more severe withdrawal symptoms than men when attempting to quit smoking.
• Women who quit smoking may relapse to smoking for different reasons than men. Stress, weight control, and negative emotions are reasons cited by women for relapse.