Many of us women grew up in a time when smoking was glorified, or maybe more so for our parents. While health class made a point to teach children about the side affects of smoking, the media sent home a different message. Today there have been many successes in removing smoking from public venues, and inappropriate advertising from television. However, smoking is still a serious issue for teenage girls today.

Although they are taught at an earlier age about the risks of smoking, they are still at risk of being one girl too many in a significant number of teen girls who smoke today. So while you are proud of them as they bring home lessons from elementary school and you share in doing projects together for their own “stop smoking” campaign, the battle is not won.

The Canadian Cancer Society funded the Nicotine Dependence in Teens study recently; where it was determined that smoking has no bearing on the weight of teenage girls. Like many adult women used to think, teenage girls believe that smoking curbs weight gain, or can assist in weight loss. Also, it is no coincidence that the tobacco companies used to target

Some of the reasons girls smoke:

- they are insecure
- their friends are doing it
- smoking will make the cool
- advertisement in women’s magazines
- they do it in the movies, the PG rated movies
- they are overweight and want to become thin
- if they are thin, they want to stay thin

Stopsmokingtoday.com reports that the smoking habit usually forms after a girl starts to have her period (that’s between the ages of 11 to 13); and it is more common to 15 and 16 year old teens. This is when they are at their most insecure and they have a problem with their body image.

The best way to conquer this battle is:

- communication, stay on top of what is really going on with your daughter
- smoke free household, if no one is smoking in your family, your chances are better that she won’t be smoking either

For more information that you can share with your daughter and her friends visit StopSmokingToday.com or get the Where There’s Smoke, There Are Teenage Girls handout from the Media Awareness Network.