Smoking also causes numerous other cancers, heart disease and other lung diseases in male and female smokers alike. About one in five women smokes, a rate that hasn't changed much in the last decade. There are solutions, Satcher said. This year alone, lung cancer will kill nearly 68,000 U.S. women. In 1999, approximately 165,000 women died prematurely from smoking-related diseases, like cancer and heart disease.
Women also face unique health effects from smoking such as problems related to pregnancy.
Smoking rates among women with less than a high school education are three times higher than for college graduates. Nearly all women who smoke started as teenagers - and 30 percent of high school senior girls are still current smokers. We have the solutions for preventing and reducing smoking among women. Quitting smoking has great health benefits for women of all ages. Thanks to an aggressive, sustained anti-smoking program, California has seen a decline in women s lung cancer rates while they are still rising in the rest of the country.