First, the relative and absolute risks of death from smoking continue to increase among female smokers; the relative risks of death from lung cancer, COPD, ischemic heart disease, any type of stroke, and all causes are now nearly identical for female and male smokers. This finding is new and confirms the prediction that, in relative terms, “women who smoke like men die like men.”27 Convergence of the relative risks for men and women results from the convergence of smoking patterns among men and women since the 1960s28,29 and the aging of birth cohorts with the heaviest lifetime history of smoking. The risk of death from lung cancer among male smokers appears to have stabilized since the 1980s, whereas it continues to increase among female smokers.
