For smokers, it's a woman's right to change her mind

SHANGHAI - The number of women smokers has nearly tripled in the city despite their claims to be against smoking, researchers said.

After monitoring the smoking habits of 2,000 people over seven years, researchers from Fudan University found that 7.2 percent of women smoked in 2009, while the figure was less than two percent in 2002. There was no significant change among the smoking rate among men, which has continued to hover around the 48 to 50 percent mark throughout the same period.

"Increasing social tolerance of women smokers and tobacco companies using aggressive marketing tactics to target women are the main reasons for the change," the lead researcher, Fu Hua, professor of public health at Fudan University, said at Thursday's tobacco control conference, ahead of World No Tobacco Day, which falls on May 31 every year.