Indian Eve's goin' up in smoke

HT Mint reports that according to a World Health Organization study, First Report on Global Tobacco Use, released earlier this year, one in every 10 women in India smokes or chews tobacco. In a nationally representative study of smoking in India, conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine in February, more than 62% of women smokers in India will die in their productive years, compared with 38% of non-smokers.

Other Survey also suggest that since the 1990s, more women than men started smoking in the crucial adolescent years. A study done by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in 2006, on 6,000 students across 32 schools in Delhi and Chennai, showed that 20% of the girls in class VI are lighting up.