John,

May is Women’s Health Month, and there is no better time to take action to prevent tobacco use among women and girls and help current tobacco users quit.

That’s why today we’re releasing a new report, A Lifetime of Damage, detailing the tobacco industry’s long history of developing cigarette brands and predatory marketing campaigns that deliberately target women and girls and how that has led to devastating consequences for women’s health at every stage of their lives.

The report documents the industry’s aggressive, century-long targeting of women and girls, utilizing themes of beauty, fashion, freedom and sophistication – and often playing into sexist tropes – while ignoring or downplaying the serious health risks of tobacco use.

The report demonstrates that strong action is needed now to protect women’s health and save lives, and it offers proven solutions to prevent young girls from starting to smoke or vape and help all women quit using tobacco. These include:

• Expanding the availability and promotion of smoking cessation treatments.
• Eliminating all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes. Flavors make it easier for kids to start using tobacco and – in the case of menthol – harder for smokers to quit.

There's a lot more inside, including extensive advertising examples and easy-to-read data visualizations.

Check out the full report at tfk.org/WomensReport, and please share it widely.

Best,

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