Smoking is very common in men and even in some villages many women smoke bidi but Casual and social smoking is on the rise among young working women across metropolitan cities in India, an Assocham report said on Thursday. "Of the total (respondents), only about two percent said they were heavy smokers (smoking one pack a day or more) but a majority of them said that peer pressure and work-related stress pushed them to increase the number of cigarettes they smoked," the report said. "Some (respondents) even said they smoked for weight loss," it added.
Almost all the respondents said that the phenomenon of women smoking was basically confined to tier-one cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, according to the report. Some of the respondents said they smoked "casually owing to the 'cool' factor and feelings of attractiveness, independence, and sophistication". About…
