Mark_27

Ever since my teenage nieces have become smokers (or at least since I've known), I've been more perceptive of others smoking and more curious as to why so many people choose to start. This weekend, I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for just a couple hours and paid close attention to smoking prevalence when at stoplights and walking into stores. There were smokers EVERYWHERE. In just a couple hours, I probably saw 50 smokers...and about 45 of them were girls between 15 and 25 years old. Young girls were smoking in their cars, in front of the mall and almost everywhere in between. When in the line for the drive-thru at Arby's, there were two sorority chick types directly in front of me, both clutching cigarettes between their fingers. Every few moments, clouds of smoke would come pouring out of their car. The whole situation perplexed me.

The cluster of apartments where I live has a similar situation. There are attractive high school girls frequently hanging out in the parking lot now that summer has arrived and are often hanging around with their boyfriends. I've never seen any of the boys smoke, but the girls are all lighting up left and right. And these are definitely not the "rebel without a cause" crowd that constituted the majority of smokers when I was in school, these girls all look like they should be running for homecoming queen. Smoking almost seems like it's becoming a feminine rite of passage.

I was out of the States for two years and heard that attitudes towards smoking were becoming extremely unfavorable. I've noticed that to be the case since returning, making it all the more surprising that teenage girls and college-age girls, who are often very conscious of how people think of them, seem to represent the largest demographic of cigarette smokers. Does anyone have any idea what's driving this? Or are my perceptions simply not accurate, or merely regionally specific? Are girls smoking to rebel? For weight control? Stress relief? Peer pressure? A combination of these thing?

My girl is 23 and smokes. I asked her and she said she started when in college because she had liked smoking when she tried it and found it to be an effective stress reliever when she was fighting deadlines in school. It doesn't strike me that my nieces or most high school girls would have so much stress that this would apply to them, but maybe I'm wrong.

Sorry to babble on with something relatively off-topic. I just thought I'd see if anyone else here could give me some insights on this matter.