The Voice of America reported July 26 that the report, "Turning a New Leaf: Women, Tobacco and the Future," said that 12 percent of women worldwide are smokers, and that up to 20 percent could be smokers by 2025 if current trends continue. Young girls, in particular, are starting to smoke, the report from the International Network of Women Against Tobacco reported.

"What this tells us is that (the number of) women smokers will increase because many girls are smoking earlier in the [life] cycle in many, many populations in the world," said Lorraine Greaves, executive director of the group.

Experts urged nations to address the issue of female smoking now. "Even if their rates of women smoking in their population are still low at two or five percent, they should come in with gender-specific cessation programs right away and not wait until the problem is at 50 or 60 percent," said report co-author Patricia Lambert of the South African Ministry of Health.

The report was released during the 2006 International Cancer and Tobacco Control Conferences in Washington.