The Seventh-day Adventist Church has launched a new stop-smoking program aimed at cutting rates of smoking among women. “For the first time, rates of smoking among women are drawing equal to those of men,” says Ardis Stenbakken, Women’s Ministries director for the Adventist Church worldwide. “The ‘Breathe-Free for Women’ program is a direct response to this trend; it has been developed by women, for women.”

Statistics released in March by the United States surgeon general show that the gender gap in smoking rates is closing, with some 22 percent of women in the United States now smoking compared with 26 percent of men. 

Dr. Linda Hyder Ferry, a leading nicotine-dependence researcher, says this is a trend that has been developing since 1963.  “More men are quitting than women,” says Hyder Ferry, who is an associate professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, an Adventist-owned university located in Southern California.  Hyder Ferry points out that smoking has a greater physiological impact on women, who are more sensitive to nicotine.  She says that women who smoke 17 to 20 cigarettes a day get the same effect as men who smoke 21 to 26 cigarettes.

Tobacco companies know that women sometimes smoke for different reasons than men, including depression, adds Hyder Ferry.  And women are twice as likely to suffer from episodes of depression, she says.

Dorothy Eaton Watts, who developed Breathe-Free for Women, says it approaches the challenge of quitting from a woman’s viewpoint.  “Women behave differently when they’re in a homogenous group; they’re more open, more comfortable speaking out,” says Watts.  She explains that where most stop-smoking programs use statistics for persuasion, Breathe-Free for Women focuses on the relationship between a woman and her appearance, sexuality, children, and family.

The surgeon general’s report also chronicles how the tobacco industry has promoted smoking to women as a road to independence and power. Hyder Ferry calls this the “Madison Avenue effect,” with tobacco companies targeting women with certain brands. 

The new stop-smoking program for women is based on “Breathe-Free,” a comprehensive stop-smoking program developed by Stoy Proctor, associate director of the Adventist Church health department, and his wife Leilani, in 1984.  Breathe-Free is the official stop-smoking program in many countries including Poland, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines, and is one of three national plans in the United States.

As director of women’s ministries for the Adventist Church, Stenbakken says she has been working hard to get Breathe-Free for Women into the community. She reports that the program has been successful in field tests and that, in the coming year, an international team of women’s ministries leaders will begin to introduce the program into local communities.