Each year more than 140,000 women die of smoking-related diseases, including 62,000 from heart disease, the leading killer of women, and 66,000 from lung cancer, the leading cancer killer of women. It's believed that the reason for this increase of this cancer, which in fact is much more difficult to detect and ultimately can be more lethal, is that the advent of so-called safe and gentler cigarettes, which women seem more likely to smoke, causes them to drag deeper and bring the carcinogens into their lungs, and so the lung cancer forms at the bottom of their lungs and the sides, which makes it more difficult for it to be detected. Young women under the age of 23 are the fastest growing sector of smokers in the United States. Smokers may also exhibit gender differences in the way they gather outside buildings to smoke.
Male smokers tend to be loners, females tend to gather in social groups.
And it's believed that these behaviors may indicate critical gender-based differences relating to smoking that have less to do with nicotine and more to do with external stimuli. Phyllis Greenberger, executive director of the Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research.