According to the latest surgeon general's report, "Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General," the number of women who die each year from smoking accounts for 39 percent of all smoking-related deaths.

"In the early decades, smoking prevalence was more prominent among men, and it took nearly 25 years before the gap narrowed and smoking became commonplace among women," said the Surgeon General. "Women not only share the same health risk as men, but are also faced with health consequences that are unique to women, including pregnancy complications, problems with menstrual function, and cervical cancer."

According to the report, there has been a 600 percent increase in women's death from lung cancer since 1950. At least 90 percent of the lung cancer deaths in women are linked to smoking.

The report is a follow-up to a 1980 report on women and smoking. Former Surgeon General David Satcher said the latest report confirms that the epidemic has become "full blown." He pointed to eight major findings in the new report. They are:

• Despite strong evidence about the health risks associated with smoking, 22 percent of women smoked cigarettes in 1998;
• In 2000, 29.7 percent of female high school seniors said they had smoked within the past 30 days;
• Since 1980, an estimated three million women in the United States have died prematurely from smoking-related tumors, cardiovascular, respiratory and pediatric diseases, as well as cigarette-caused burns;
• Lung cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women, exceeding breast cancer in 1987;
• Exposure to secondhand smoke is a cause of lung cancer and coronary heart disease among women who are lifetime nonsmokers;
• Women who stop smoking greatly reduce their risk of dying prematurely and quitting smoking at any age is beneficial;
• Smoking during pregnancy remains a major public health problem, despite increased evidence of the adverse health effects;
• Marketing by the tobacco industry is a factor in why girls both in the United States and in other countries start to smoke.

The report makes several recommendations, among them increasing awareness of the impact of smoking on women's health, enacting comprehensive statewide tobacco control programs, countering tobacco marketing, encouraging women's groups to give a face to diseases like lung cancer and emphasizing that most women do not smoke.

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