Developing a public policy response to the tobacco industry's targeting of women and girls: the role of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

More than 1 billion people smoke worldwide, and 200 million of them are women. The prevalence of tobacco use among women is rising, as is the tobacco-related disease burden. Recently released tobacco industry documents unequivocally establish that the tobacco industry has made a practice of targeting women and girls for decades in an effort to cultivate what it considers an underexploited market. This article discusses the importance of strategies to limit the growth of the tobacco pandemic and describes the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which may have important implications for preventing the further spread of tobacco use among women.