Women Smokers -- Gambling With Their Lives

Young women and a deadly habit. Can they finally quit smoking?

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Deadly Trend

A dozen twentysomethings gathered in a Manhattan bar. Two were med students, another a PhD candidate at an Ivy League university, and the rest young professionals making their way in the big city. They were the image of health and fitness, except for one thing -- 10 of the 12 were smokers.

Young people are lighting up in large numbers, especially those 18 to 24. One in five women in this age group nationwide is a smoker, a figure that has held fairly steady for the past few years. Some blame the billions that cigarette companies spend on marketing each year ($13 billion in '05), including promotions geared toward young adults. Girls are especially influenced by the glamorous images of smokers in movies and shows like Sex and the City, and many of them have heard that smoking can keep them thin. A 2002 CDC study found that high school girls who were trying to lose weight were 40 percent more likely to smoke than their peers who weren't.

And teenage girls who start dieting are nearly twice as likely to start smoking as those who aren't trying to slim down, according to a 2007 study.

Girls are also swayed by celebrities and models who smoke to stay thin. Smoking among female lead characters in movies nearly tripled from the 1960s to the late 1990s, and tabloids run candid shots of A-listers puffing away. Supermodel Naomi Campbell once told a reporter, "I never diet. I smoke." Actress Cheryl Ladd admits she smoked for 23 years to stay thin, and it was reported Gisele Bündchen gained 15 pounds when she quit.

Add to this the invincibility factor. Every day, about 4,000 young people take their first puff, and, as 24-year-old Katie Laster did, some 1,300 become daily smokers. They know the health risks, but they just don't care.

"When you're young, you think nothing bad is going to happen to you," says Laster, who started smoking when she was 19. She's trying to quit, but it's not about health. "It's horrible, but I'm more concerned about my looks," she says. "It's not so much 'I'm going to get cancer.' It's more or less 'I'm going to get wrinkles.' I need to quit because this is really affecting my appearance."

Laster, who does freelance promotions and marketing work in Los Angeles, smoked up to half a pack a day yet never considered herself a smoker. On her MySpace page, in response to the question "Do you smoke?" Laster says no. "I say no because everyone does it, but no one likes to admit they do. It's really not attractive.

"I know this is not good for me, and it doesn't make me feel good," she admits. "I wake up in the morning and I feel gross. Every time I smoke, I think, This will be my last one." But it never is, and she doesn't think her habit is bad enough to warrant a nicotine patch or prescription drugs.

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Out of the Navy and ready to buy my own home, I filled out the veterans loan forms and mailed them away. But what I didn't realize was that I had placed the forms in the envelope containing a lock of hair from my two-year-old son's first haircut. Two weeks later I received this note: "Enclosed is your loan certificate. Regardless of what you were told, we really don't need a sample of your DNA."

-- Francis T. Jimmis

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