Light Smoking Popular Among Young Women

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Light Smoking Popular Among Young Women

New researches published in Preventing Chronic Disease shows that light smoking is growing in popularity among young American women.

While looking at data, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin noticed there had been a recent spike in casual smoking, especially among women. To learn more about this, they analyzed smoking habits of a sample of 9,789 women between the ages of 18 and 25 through data from the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

The data included information on how many cigarettes women smoked per day, how often they smoked and if they smoked at all. Those who had smoked at least a part of a cigarette within the last 30 days were categorized as smokers; those who had not were categorized as nonsmokers. Out of the current smokers, 62 percent were labeled as light smokers. In this study, light smokers were defined as smoking anything from 5 or fewer cigarettes per day to only smoking cigarettes on a casual basis. Many people in the current smokers group were young women between the ages of 18 and 25 living in the United States. Additionally, researchers found that 18-20 year old women were at an especially high risk of smoking due to the stress of entering adulthood.

Authors on the study warned that light or casual smoking is very unhealthy and can cause numerous negative health effects.