China's smoking epidemic grows

'Smoke like a man, die like a man'?: a review of the relationship between gender, sex and lung cancer

Lung cancer is one of the most important 'avoidable' causes of death world-wide. It is also one in which differences in relation to sex and gender are especially significant. Increasing lung cancer deaths amongst women alongside stable or decreasing deaths amongst men in many countries have substantially altered the male:female ratio in this disease and produced a need to understand differences between men and women in lung cancer risk, and how they relate to sex and gender. This paper reviews research on differences between men and women in lung cancer incidence, mortality and survival, focusing on material which adds to our understanding of the complex differences between each group. This review suggests that the risk of lung cancer may be different for men and women in response to a complex interaction between biological factors such as hormonal difference and gendered factors such as smoking behaviour. In particular women's apparently greater relative risk of lung cancer and the differences between men and women in the risk of specific histological types of lung cancer need to be understood from a perspective in which both biological influences and gender influences are drawn out.

Teenage smoking in China

China's production and consumption of cigarettes have ranked first in the world. One of every three cigarettes manufactured in the world is consumed in China. Three of every five Chinese smokers begin smoking at the age of 15-20 years. Teenage smoking is increasingly becoming a problem in modern China. At least 50 million of the children now living in China will be killed by smoking. Therefore China's top priority in control of smoking is to educate the youth against smoking so as to prevent them from starting and reduce the overall number of new smokers. Adults smoke; children follow. Thus a major feature of China's smoking control efforts has been the mobilization of primary school children to advise their parents to stop smoking. The goal of the Chinese Association on Smoking and Health is to achieve a male (age 15+) smoking rate below 58% and a female (age 15+) smoking rate below 5% by the year 2000. Although the number of smoke-free schools is on the increase and many more teenagers are quitting, China still has a long way to go.