Smoking Tough on Women / Decades of Cigarettes Prompt Lung Cancer Cases to Soar
Florida Today (Sunday, August 26, 2001)
Author: Susan Jenks / FLORIDA TODAY
Full Text: here
Mace's story illustrates some alarming statistics. Between 1960 and 1990, the death rate among women from lung cancer rose by 400 percent and still is climbing about 1 percent a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

About 90 percent of these deaths are caused by tobacco use, the American Lung Association says.

The increase in lung cancer deaths in women is considered a legacy of smoking habits that began for many women decades ago and now is taking its toll.

Although the number of women smoking has leveled off somewhat, public health officials say, some 22 million women still smoke, putting themselves at increased risk for this disease. Of those, at least 1.5 million smokers are teen-age girls.