Breaking the Camel's Back: Bringing Women's Human Rights to Bear on Tobacco Control

Abstract

Tobacco is the largest single cause of premature death in the United States and a major cause of preventable death throughout the world. Globally, tobacco is now responsible for approximately four million deaths every year. Of these, over half a million are women -a yearly loss greater than the entire population of the state of Vermont. In the United States now, more women die annually from lung cancer than from breast cancer, and women face increased risk for a host of tobacco-related cancers, reproductive disorders, and other debilitations. Confronted with evidence of this magnitude, many policy makers-in the U.S. and abroad-have taken on the issue of tobacco control and decried the spread of tobacco as a global health crisis.