More women taking up smoking
She was young and surrounded by smoking friends.
"Smoking is cool," she thought to herself. Taking a deep breath, she inhaled her first cigarette smoke. She became hooked - for a long time.
Across generations, the story has been the same for many female smokers.
According to Department of Health statistics, the smoking rate among Hong Kong women increased from 2.6 per cent in 1990 to 3.6 per cent in 2008. Female smokers also pick up the habit at a younger age. While women aged 55 or more said they began smoking in their late 20s, the younger generation, aged 15 to 24, said they started smoking when they were 15.
The trend in Hong Kong is in line with the rest of the world. It is estimated that 250 million women smoke daily worldwide, and the number is rising.
That's why today, the World Health Organisation's World No Tobacco Day, is themed "women and smoking".
Four women of different generations interviewed in Hong Kong said they took up the habit because their friends encouraged them, but they would be willing to quit for the sake of their partners.
Wanko, 17, has smoked since she was in Primary Five. "A friend told me to. There was no reason to be idle when my friend was busily smoking," she said.
Consuming two to three cigarettes a day and spending at least HK$100 a month on smoking, Wanko said she found the extra money to pay for the habit by working part-time in a restaurant. "I do not think girls smoking is anything special. This is gender equality."
Victoria Pek, 31, started smoking 10 years ago and gets through five a day. "Smoking is cool. It can also relieve my stress," she said.
Men were more likely to smoke in her generation but had no problem with women smoking, "as long as we are still ladylike", she said.
Cheung Lai-sheung, 82, started smoking when she was 20.
"Back then almost no women smoked. I was just copying my elder sister who was copying the American actresses," she said.
Cheung said that when she started she did not know smoking was harmful. "Almost all men smoked but none seemed to be particularly ill at that time," she said.
As women became more educated through the years, 15-year-old Sarah was well aware of the hazards of smoking when friends offered her a cigarette in Primary Five.
"I just thought it was fun and I would become more sociable," she said. "Also, a lot of handsome actors and singers smoked."
She soon noticed that after smoking, she developed bad breath and her teeth became stained, which were the main reasons she quit.
Cheung quit smoking 20 years ago, when her husband, a heavy smoker, died from lung cancer. "I was totally devastated," she said.
Pek, who said she had not suffered major health problems so far, said she would be willing to quit if her boyfriend asked her to do so.
While women start smoking at an earlier age, it seems that men increasingly prefer women who do not smoke.
Cheung and Pek said they had no problem finding men who accepted their habit, but Sarah and Wanko said most of their male friends insisted that girls should not smoke.
"I care a lot about how others view me. I do not want to look like a bad girl so I made up my mind to quit," Sarah said.
Compared with non-smokers, women who smoke are 213 per cent more likely to die of respiratory diseases and 60 per cent more likely to die of cancer.
Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee, head of the Department of Nursing at the University of Hong Kong, said female smokers might find it harder to quit because most women smoked to ease emotional problems. "As long as these problems don't go away, they may continue to smoke."
She said tobacco firms were tapping women as a new customer base as the global smoking rate among men had almost plateaued.
Source: http://www.scmp.com
Reference Link: http://www.who.int/tobacco/wntd/2010/announcement/en/index.html
