British researchers said advertising helped boost the number of women smokers in Russia -- from 7 percent in 1992 to almost 15 percent by 2003.

Dr. Anna Gilmore of the School for Health at the University of Bath and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and University College London also found the number of Russian men who smoke had risen from 57 percent to 63 percent.

The study used data on more than 7,000 individuals collected from 1992-2003 as part of the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey.
 

Gilmore said that tobacco advertising didn't exist during the Soviet era but by the mid-1990s it is estimated that half of all billboards in Moscow and three quarters of plastic bags in Russia carried tobacco advertising.

"The fact that the transnational tobacco companies have managed to drive up male smoking rates from already high levels is incredibly alarming -- there is already a major demographic crisis in Russia and smoking, which already accounts for nearly half of male deaths," Gilmore said in a statement. "The smoking epidemic in women is at a much earlier stage but, with this rapid increase, is set to catch up fast."