Instead of talking about fashion, Viktoria Lagerström, Miss Sweden of 1997, spends her time telling young girls what definitely is out of fashion: the smoking habit.
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Sweden is among the few countries in which smoking prevalence in women (22%) is higher than in men (17%).
"One of the biggest challenges of Swedish tobacco control programs is to reach women and young girls, in particular working class girls," said Margaretha Haglund, head of the Tobacco Control Program at the Swedish Institute of Public Health. "Therefore, we needed to go beyond traditional health education to really get inside the group of girls by giving the information about tobacco a good-looking image."
Haglund also is president of the International Network of Women Against Tobacco, a pressure group based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that specifically addresses the hazards of the growing tobacco epidemic among women.
The Swedish approach to female smoking prevention was one of the numerous presentations at the Paris conference which aimed at raising awareness of women's tobacco control issues within the EU and other European countries. It was organized by the European Network for Smoking Prevention, an international non-profit tobacco control association based in Brussels. In addition, the ENSP issued a new and alarming draft report which was finalized at the conference. The report, "Some Like it `Light' Women and Tobacco in the European Union," analyzed the trends of smoking prevalence among women in the EU and the possible health consequences.
"Lights" Weigh Heavy
According to the report, the percentage of adult women smokers has risen sharply in Western Europe since the end of World War II.
"Growing social acceptance of female smoking and the fact that it is still considered a symbol of self assertion and liberation has contributed to this increase," said Anne Borgne, M.D., from the French Smoke Free Hospitals Network in Paris. "As a result the gap between the proportion of smokers among men and women has been reduced in all EU countries."
In Europe, women even though they are catching up in numbers do not smoke in the same way as men do.
"In contrast to their male counterparts, they prefer filter-tipped light (low tar) tobacco cigarette brands," said Sibylle Fleitmann, ENSP's Secretary General. "In general they also do not smoke cigars or pipes, nor do they use oral snuff."
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"Women who smoke `lights' are often unaware that low tar cigarettes have the same amount of toxic substances as regular cigarettes and that the health risks may be as high as for conventional cigarettes," said Luk Joossens, co-author of the report and tobacco control expert at the Belgian Consumer Research and Information Center in Brussels.
Joossens said the term "light" particularly appeals to women. Added to a food label, the term helps sell an item to the diet-conscious; added to a cigarette brand name, the term appeals to smokers who are looking for supposedly safer products. The tobacco industry therefore has long been focusing on the promotion of light cigarettes, which are more popular than the women-only brands.
"Women should know that to there is no such thing as a safe tobacco product. The only way to avoid smoking-related health problems is not to smoke at all," Joossens said.
Even though in some East and South European countries the percentage of smoking women still is low, there are six EU countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Austria, and Luxembourg) in which the number of female smokers constantly is growing.
"This is particularly alarming," said Joosens, " because the increase is due to the fact that more and more young girls take up smoking. If this trend continues, it is the women who predominantly will be affected by tobacco-related health consequences during the next century. " He added: "What we need are specifically tailored anti-tobacco campaigns for women, especially for young women and girls to prevent them taking up the hazardous habit."
The report "Some Like it `Light' Women and Smoking in the European Union" received financial support from the Europe Against Cancer Programme, the tobacco control program of the European Commission. It was scheduled to be available in the 11 languages of the EU by the end of January. The report is available from ENSP at 48 rue de Pascale, b-1040 Brussels, Belgium. Phone: 32 2 230 65 15; fax 32 2 230 75 07; e-mail: info@ensp.org.
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