We are beginning to get an early picture of some of these differences and similarities between women and men. The greatest appeals of tobacco use for women are friendship, weight management, image, and feeling management. Both men and women smoke when they are angry or stressed, but women smoke in response to even milder feelings than men do. Women also smoke more often when they are happy, and may be responding more to external social cues than to the medicinal effect of smoking. There is some evidence that women, and not men, smoke to regulate negative moods, like depression or anxiety.
Women also seem to benefit more from social support for their quitting efforts than men.
Women who want to quit smoking need to include special strategies, such as social support, stress management and feeling management, in their quitting plan. As with alcohol, women metabolize nicotine slower than men do, which means that they can have higher concentrations of the drug than men per cigarette smoked. This could mean that women become more drug dependent, or dependent more quickly, than men do. This also means that they may have more intense nicotine withdrawal symptoms when they quit. Recent studies also show that nicotine withdrawal symptoms are worse in the latter part of the menstrual cycle and during menses.