More Beijing women taking up smoking

BEIJING, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- The number of women in Beijing who smoke cigarettes has risen in the past decade, research has found.

Government-funded research determined that in 1997, only 8.76 percent of women in China's capital and second-largest city smoked cigarettes but that percentage increased to nearly 10.4 percent by 2004, China's state-run news agency, Xinhua, reported Saturday.

The study was conducted by the tobacco control organization, Think Tank Research Center for Health Development, which added "the smoking rate among Beijing women was still rising."

Yet the report did find that smoking throughout Beijing as a whole has declined during the same time period.

The study said that at the end of 2007, the smoking rate was at nearly 23 percent compared to the 34.5 percent found in 1997.

"Beijing's anti-smoking efforts have proven as effective as those of New York City," the report said, "with an annual 1.08 percent decline in smoking rates since a regional smoking ban in public areas took effect in 1995."