I calculated the smoking rate among women who placed ads on a popular internet dating site.The sample size is huge.The main thing that stands out is that the prevalence of smoking on this site(38.3%) is MUCH higher among women who place personal ads than the numbers you normally see in general smoking surveys.There could be a few reasons for this.The main factor is that a large % of women who place ads are divorced,seperated,and/or single mothers,all groups who have much higher smoking rates than average.In general,the highest smoking rates are in the Midwest and states that border the midwest.The lowest smoking rates tend to be in large urban centers on both coasts,especially the west coast.But,no place has extremely low smoking rates,every single area is over 25%.Interestingly,the states that consistently had the highest teen female smoking rates in the 1990s(New Hampshire,North Dakota,and West Virginia)have the highest female 18-24 smoking rates on this site.
Here are the top ten areas for female smoking(aged 18-49)
Indiana 47.2%
North Dakota 47.2
West Virginia 46.5
Alaska 46.1
Nebraska 45.3
Tennessee-Nashville 45.1
Wyoming 44.8
Kansas 44.4
Arkansas 44.1
New York-Buffalo 43.9
Here are the bottom 5 areas
California-San Francisco 26.9
Florida-Miami 26.7
Utah 26.4
California-San Diego 26.1
California-Los Angeles 26.0
