Potential customers

In recent years, tobacco producers have spared no effort in seeking new customers to replace those who have given up smoking or died early of smoking-related diseases.

Currently, women are one of the target groups and are essential if the tobacco industry wants to expand its markets.

In modern life, women are becoming more independent and can decide on family expenses. Therefore, tobacco producers have launched sophisticated promotion and advertising programmes by playing on women’s psychology by saying smoking shows your independence and help you to become more beautiful, with a fit body.

They also produce products exclusively designed for women to make them think these products are not harmful.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the number of women smokers in the world currently accounts for 9 percent. This means that one out of ten is female.

In Vietnam, despite the low number of women smokers (around 2 percent, while men are 50 percent), the number of women keen on smoking is rapidly increasing.

According to the WHO’s smoking survey on adolescents in 151 nations across the world including Vietnam, half of the countries have the same number of female adolescent smokers as males. Adolescent smokers easily become addicted to tobacco when they grown up.

Fatal consequences

In fact, smoking does not indicate a women’s independence and help them to have a trimmer figure. A WHO representative in Vietnam, Nguyen Tuan Lam said that smoking makes women get older faster and get more wrinkles and also take the risk of contracting dangerous diseases such as, lung diseases, bronchitis and cancers related to lung, mouth, larynx, bladder, spleen, cervix and breasts.

Women smokers during pregnancy can have still borns, abortions or premature births or their babies can die suddenly or be underweight. They are also at risk of becoming infertile or find it difficult to get pregnant.

According to the WHO’s statistics, approximately 1.5 million out of the 5 million people who die from smoking around the world annually are women. If no effective measures are taken soon, the smoking death toll will increase to more than 8 million in 2030 and around 2.5 million of them will be women.

Around three quarters of female deaths come from low and middle-income countries which are not able to cope with these losses.

The WHO has introduced a framework convention on tobacco control and called on all governments to work out strategies on this issue to help women keep away from smoking and the tobacco industry’s tricks.