Women are taking to smoking like never before

India has been, for some decades now, a happy hunting ground for the West. An upwardly mobile populace — with young women flooding the workplace looking to find financial independence, a new way of life, and new products to lift their lifestyle to the next level — make the country a low-hanging fruit every foreign business wants to grab. Thus from cosmetic houses to phone companies, shoe brands to d-i-y furniture, every brand sees in India a market guaranteed to make their cash registers sing out loud.

It is thus no surprise that cigarette companies too target women. Decades ago, the tobacco companies tried to entice women of the elite class to take to smoking their brands. Slim, flavoured cigarellos and cigarettes, supposedly feminine in appearance but as deadly as the rest of the packs in the market were sent into the Indian market. Perhaps they found few takers, for the brands sighed out quietly.

But tobacco had the last laugh. Thanks to the compulsive need for young women to prove they are masters of their own lives and destiny, and the desire to impress their male colleagues that they are as good as any man in the workplace, women took to smoking. The corridors of offices were dotted with groups of young executives wreathed in clouds of smoke that emanated from the lungs of both genders.

Stairwells were where one could spot a lone woman or two smoking as they exchanged office gossip or cribbed about their work. Advertising of cigarettes on television, radio, print was banned, but the image of the woman who had arrived as one dressed in a power suit, holding a cigarette as she worked on her computer remained.

Stronger addiction

The power suit went out of fashion, but tobacco held on; the addiction of its new victims only getting stronger as the stresses of an upward aimed career, and of being a woman in India grew. Even those who could not smoke in public took to the weed, smoking away their tensions in the privacy of the bathroom.

Statistics show India is now second only to the US when it comes to women smokers. More disturbing is the fact that a study across schools in Chennai and Delhi, two very different sociological universes, there was very little gap in the percentages between genders. Girls start earlier than boys, and fewer quit smoking, with the percentage being at 20 for both men and women.

Alarming indeed. A UK study sounded the alarm when it highlighted the fact that diagnosis of lung cancer in women was poised to outnumber men’s for the first time in the 2022-2024 period.

With smoking peaking earlier in women than in men, there was need for women to be alert to signs of potential lung cancer as they are about checking for lumps in the breast. This should ring alarm bells in India too. Cancer is a blind predator who attacks without discriminating between country, ethnic group or age.

And in India, as in many other family-oriented countries, a woman falling ill with any debilitating illness affects the entire family, and puts an extra burden on the afflicted.

Smoking as status symbol, or rebellion; as release from tension leads one down the same path. The fallout is addiction to tobacco, bad breath, stained fingers and in an increasing number of cases, susceptibility to lung cancer.

The rather frightening photographs made mandatory on cigarette packets do not seem to have much effect. Though numbers of male smokers have shown a decrease, the demographic shift that gets young women hooked earlier in life, and reflects a growing trend, needs to be addressed.

Educating a girl is important; educating her as she grows into adolescence on the dangers on the route to achieving her career goals is more so. And tobacco leads the list.

The writer is a Consulting Editor with Penguin India

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