In fact, among men we have begun to see a decline in lung cancer, which reflects the fact that smoking rates began to decline in men before women. I era, whereas women only started smoking in large numbers about 20 years later. There are actually some hopeful signs that the lung cancer epidemic has peaked in women too, reflecting the decline in smoking prevalence among women that began in the 1970s. Teenage smoking has been a huge concern during the 1990s. Not only did smoking rates among teens not come down during most of the 1990s, they in fact rose markedly until about 1997.
Smoking rates are now quite similar in girls and boys.
It is impressive to see what has happened to smoking rates in states that have strong comprehensive tobacco control programs, including high cigarette taxes, powerful anti-tobacco media on television, strong nonsmoking policies in public places, and the like. In those states, smoking rates among kids have come down much more impressively than elsewhere. In both California and Massachusetts, which have the oldest and best-funded youth tobacco control programs, the youth smoking rate is now higher than it was before those programs began. Although I don't have the latest statistics from California and Massachusetts at my fingertips, it is definitely my understanding that smoking rates among teens in those states did not increase to the same extent in the 1990s as in other states without such strong programs. The ads targeted to women are so . . .