China expecting increase in smoking among women

Current data indicates that the smoking rate among women in China is ‘very likely’ to rise ‘even further’, according to a story by Mason Coltrane for Yibada.

Coltrane said the issue of smoking among women was no longer confined to the northern rural regions of the country where middle-aged and elderly women had traditionally smoked cigarettes while not working or during harsh winters.

According to the Women of China website, concentrations of women smokers now occurred in eastern urban locations because young career women had taken up the practice.

Additionally, smoking among adolescent female smokers was said to have become a major concern.

Even as far back as 2005, a national survey found that 23 percent of teenage girls had admitted to smoking; and 68 percent of this group had smoked a whole cigarette prior to their becoming 13 years of age.

The number of teenagers smoking in 2005 represented almost a 15-percent rise from that of seven years earlier.