SCOTLAND'S shocking rate of women dying from lung cancer has pushed it above breast cancer for the first time as the main cause of cancer death among Britain's female population.

Smoking has been blamed for much of the rise and campaigners warn that the death toll is set to get worse.

By 1992, Scottish women had developed the world's highest death rate from lung cancer. It was shown to be more common among women in Glasgow than breast cancer - a record at the time thought to be unique in the developed world.

Now, eight years on, the Cancer Research Campaign says Scotland's unenviable soaring lung cancer death rates have helped the disease to overtake breast cancer figures Britain-wide.

Professor Gordon McVie, director general of the Cancer Research Campaign, said it was ironic that a disease like lung cancer, a major cause of which is smoking, has overtaken breast cancer whose causes are less well understood and whose prospects for primary prevention appear limited.

He said yesterday: ''Lung cancer is the disease of the less well off woman of which Scotland and the North of England have more than their fair share. Cigarettes are potentially death in a packet. More young girls than boys are taking up the habit and older women are not as successful as men in packing it in once they are hooked.''

Professor McVie said it was galling that more and more young girls were being lured into smoking by a mistaken belief it was grown-up and the myth it can be used as a slimming tool. He called on the Government to introduce an immediate ban on tobacco advertising in order to protect Britain's young women and men.

''Maybe now people will start to take this disease seriously. Now that they realise it is killing more people than breast cancer, maybe the penny will drop,'' he said.

Statistics released yesterday show that 12,765 women died of lung cancer in Scotland, England, and Wales last year compared with 12,677 from breast cancer.

Deaths from lung cancer among women have risen by 36% in the last 20 years, while the death rate from breast cancer has fallen by 5% since 1980, partly because of the national screening programme.

The worrying figures come as the Government prepares to publish its National Cancer Plan for tackling the disease.

It will set standards and targets for prevention, diagnosis and treatment as part of a Government pledge to reduce deaths from cancer by 20% by 2010.