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Smoking rates among teenage girls have declined across Canada for the first time since 2003, according to a new study by Health Canada.

According to the latest results from the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey, the prevalence of smoking among girls aged 15 to 19 dropped to 14 per cent in 2006, after holding steady at 18 per cent for the previous three years.

Smoking among boys of the same cohort dropped to 16 per cent in 2006, compared with 18 per cent in 2005.

Teenage smoking rates have remained steady in recent years while older demographics have experienced a decline.

The reason why teenagers are now increasingly rejecting cigarettes is a matter of some debate among health experts.

Some say it is the result of increased heath education, while others believe girls - who accounted for most of the recent overall decline among teenagers - are mimicking the behaviours of older women.

Cynthia Callard is executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.

She said the shift in smoking rates is a result of increased regulation, including anti-smoking bylaws, higher taxes and the fact that selling cigarettes to minors is more harshly penalized.

"Girls seem to be responding more to the policy changes than boys," she said.

Ms. Callard believes the overall downward trend of smoking rates among teens since 2000 is the result of a stricter anti-smoking culture, rather than any specific campaign encouraging kids to butt out.

Roberta Ferrence, executive director of the University of Toronto's Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, said the decrease among teenage girls could also be attributed to an increased interest in healthy and environmentally friendly living, or they could be following the lead of their fortysomething mothers, a group that has also seen a decline in smoking rates.

"Women generally are more health-conscious," she said.

Dr. Ferrence does not believe the decline in smoking among teenage girls can be credited to research released at McGill University last year that showed the habit does not contribute to weight loss. It had long been assumed that many young girls smoked in an attempt to remain thin, but Dr. Ferrence says her own research has not found this to be true.

Nor does she believe that pop culture is playing a role in female attitudes toward smoking, pointing out that cigarette advertisements are still printed in the U.S. magazines that many young girls tend to read.

Dr. Ferrence says the change simply follows historical patterns. "Women started smoking later than men and started quitting later than men."

Renee Bergeron, a spokesperson for Health Canada, credits the overall drop in teenage smoking - down to 15 per cent in 2006 from 18 per cent in 2003 to 2005 - to the government's efforts to discourage youth from taking up smoking through regulation and education programming in schools.

But Ms. Callard said education programs have been shown to have little effect on teenage habits, and smoking rates did not begin to drop until cities, provinces and federal institutions started implementing smoke-free policies.

"Those measures really only came into place at the beginning of this century," she said. "That's why we're seeing such dramatic improvements now."