News ticker stories about smoking and women

Occasionally, my news ticker happens to serendipitously have stories aboutrelated topics (or topics that seem related in my head). This time, as I was scrolling through the day's updates, I saw one story about how smoking bans encourage female smokers to quit:

The new study uses data from a national survey of 7,610 women who work outside the home, 81 percent of whom said they smoked daily.

Twenty percent of women with home and work smoking bans said they intended to quit smoking, compared with 14 percent of those with work bans only, 20 percent with home bans only and 14 percent with smoking bans in neither place.

Yet, even women who said they had no intentions of quitting still made spontaneous attempts to quit, the study found, and a home ban appeared to have a slightly larger effect than a work ban. Thirty-four percent of women who had no prior intention of quitting but who had a ban only at home said they had attempted to quit, compared with 33 percent with bans at home and work and 25 percent with no bans.

More information: Rose A, et al. The role of worksite and home smoking bans in smoking cessation among U.S. employed adult female smokers. Am J Health Promo 26(1), 2011.

Then, just a few stories down, I saw this from copyranter, about new cigarette packaging in Russia that is specifically aimed at girls:

"Sweet dreams" indeed. I'm sure, though, that the Sandman won't be the one that will take you though; with ever-accumulating evidence linking smoking with lung cancer (and other cancers), I'll more likely be Charon (and his dreams are less varied and more dismal -- and final -- than Morpheus').