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Ex-tobacco insider says companies target blacks 

A former tobacco industry executive said Friday in Charleston that cigarette companies have targeted black people in America.

LaTanisha Wright began working for the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., based in Louisville, Ky., in 2001. She resigned after the company merged with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in July 2004 to form Reynolds American.

"My goal is to educate people in churches, schools and community centers, as well as public health officials," Wright said. She said her experience in the tobacco industry makes her better able to help people now.

"Our training stresses how Big Tobacco targets black communities. A lot of people living in black communities don't recognize that," Wright said. "They targeted black communities and youth. They post many more billboards and signs in black communities than in white communities."

About 40 people attended Wright's five-hour training session on Friday at the Blessed John XXIII Pastoral Center.

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Former Tobacco Industry Executive Shares Inside Secrets  

A national organization is bringing to the spotlight the connection between smoking and the African-American community. A five hour seminar was underway Friday afternoon in Charleston called "Follow the Signs." A former tobacco industry manager and current National African-American Tobacco Prevention Network Director is traveling the country - alerting African-Americans on how big tobacco companies are specifically targeting them.

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Former Tobacco Industry Executive Discusses Negative Impact of Tobacco  

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- A former tobacco industry executive is in Charleston to discuss how she feels tobacco companies negatively target African Americans.

Friday's event was at the Blessed John XXIII Pastoral Center in Charleston.

La Tanisha Wright is the director of the National African-American Tobacco Prevention Network. She also developed a program called "Follow the Signs."

The program addresses the impact of Big Tobacco contracts on the placement, presence, price and promotion of tobacco to African Americans, according to the news release. The goal of the seminar is to showcase what can be done to reduce and prevent tobacco related disease and death.

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Advocate calls for menthol cigarette ban  

Cheryl G. Healton, head of the American Legacy Foundation, told 150 scientists and public health advocates the success of menthol cigarettes is no accident.

Many hundreds of tobacco industry documents conclusively establish that the tobacco industry has for decades systematically developed and marketed menthol products to attract "starter" and youth smokers, Healton said. . . .

"Congress did ban a wide array of other flavors including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry and coffee, based on the common sense logic that flavored cigarettes make smoking more attractive to kids," Healton told the meeting.

However, menthol flavors are still permitted, Healton pointed out. Forty-seven percent of Hispanic smokers in high school usually smoke menthol cigarettes, while 76 percent of African-American smokers, 62 percent of Asian-American smokers and 29 percent of white smokers prefer menthol cigarettes.

Conference sponsors and supporters included the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Legacy Foundation, the American Lung Association, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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A Doctor's Word -- Black Americans Can Escape the Smoking Trap  

Editor's Note: Smoking-related diseases are the number one killer of African Americans, and tobacco companies relentlessly market their product in the black community. But each year, many smokers do manage to quit. Dr. Erin Marcus tells the story of a longtime smoker who, at the age of 55, is successfully kicking the habit. . .

Stopping a decades-long habit -- and breaking the physical and psychological addiction of tobacco -- was extremely tough for Jones, just as it is for most smokers. But he is optimistic that he will succeed.

In her next column, Dr. Marcus will describe some of the techniques that worked for Lawrence Jones, and some tips she's gathered while taking care of patients over the years.

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Altria Group and Aon Corporation CEOs to be Honored by Chicago United as 2009 Bridge Award Recipients 

Chicago United, a membership organization that promotes corporate diversity and inclusion, today announced the recipients of the 2009 National and Chicago Bridge Awards. Michael E. Szymanczyk, chairman and chief executive officer of Altria Group, Inc., will receive the National Bridge Award for exemplary practices of a Fortune 500 corporation and Gregory Case, president and chief executive officer of Aon Corporation, will receive the Chicago Bridge Award for supporting the development of a vibrant and richly diverse business community in the Chicago region.

The awards will be presented at Chicago United's 6th Annual Changing Color of Leadership Conference and Bridge Awards Dinner on November 10 at the Hilton Chicago. A committee of corporate and non-profit executives, entrepreneurs and academics selected Szymanczyk and Case as the Bridge Award recipients based on an examination of publicly-available data along with select qualitative attributes of the company, such as supplier and workforce diversity.

The National Bridge Award represents the first national award that honors a CEO who is an advocate for multiracial diversity in corporate governance and executive level management. This award brings visibility to those who have managed change, and inspires others to follow.

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Anti-smoking info campaign targets minorities  

A statewide anti-smoking campaign aimed at minorities and those in poverty that highlights the dangers of second-hand smoke has begun.

Dubbed "Everybody Smokes When Anybody Smokes," the campaign will use radio, bus and billboard advertisements to get the message across. And local anti-smoking advocates say they hope it will bolster their ongoing efforts to reach into minority communities to underscore the dangers of smoking.

"There are definitely certain groups that are impacted in different ways," said Mandy Myszka, public health educator for the Marathon County Health Department. "For instance, the lower socio-economic population, the tobacco companies really target them specifically. They can offer them free tobacco products to get them started, for instance."

The state campaign -- promoted by the Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, a coalition of community anti-smoking activists and the state Department of Health Services -- will use minority spokespeople to help make the connection with minority groups. For example, Blia Lor, a Hmong woman from Milwaukee, will be featured on billboards.

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JACKSON: Let’s ban all flavors of cigarettes  

IT WAS a good first step by the Food and Drug Administration to ban candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes this week under its new powers to regulate tobacco. The next and much bigger step is ending Menthol Madness. . . .

Medical journal studies over the last four years have found that smokers of menthol cigarettes are significantly more likely to have difficulty quitting smoking and that tobacco companies have deliberately manipulated menthol levels (as they did with nicotine) to lure younger smokers with "milder'' taste. While menthol cigarettes are nearly 30 percent of the overall US market, 44 percent of smokers ages 12 to 17 reported smoking menthol brands.

The menthol exemption also leaves dangling in political midair explosive charges of racism. . . .

But with at least a year to go before possible banning, Big Tobacco is systematically hooking as many new smokers as possible. Martin Orlowsky, the CEO of Lorillard, which makes the top-selling menthol Newport, said this month, "We will continue to leverage the very strong brand equity position Newport has, particularly in key markets where the opportunity - that is, menthol opportunity - is greatest.''

As to where those "key markets'' are, Reynolds American CEO Susan Ivey said in 2006, "If you look at the demographics of menthol, it is very urban. It has always had a strong African-American component. It's always had actually a strong Caucasian component. What has changed a lot in the last five years is a lot of additional Hispanic in that demographic. . . . we would see that menthol would have additional opportunity.''

The FDA cannot close that window of opportunity too soon.

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Altria Group and Aon Corporation CEOs to be Honored by Chicago United as 2009 Bridge Award Recipients 

Chicago United, a membership organization that promotes corporate diversity and inclusion, today announced the recipients of the 2009 National and Chicago Bridge Awards. Michael E. Szymanczyk, chairman and chief executive officer of Altria Group, Inc., will receive the National Bridge Award for exemplary practices of a Fortune 500 corporation and Gregory Case, president and chief executive officer of Aon Corporation, will receive the Chicago Bridge Award for supporting the development of a vibrant and richly diverse business community in the Chicago region.

The awards will be presented at Chicago United's 6th Annual Changing Color of Leadership Conference and Bridge Awards Dinner on November 10 at the Hilton Chicago. A committee of corporate and non-profit executives, entrepreneurs and academics selected Szymanczyk and Case as the Bridge Award recipients based on an examination of publicly-available data along with select qualitative attributes of the company, such as supplier and workforce diversity.

The National Bridge Award represents the first national award that honors a CEO who is an advocate for multiracial diversity in corporate governance and executive level management. This award brings visibility to those who have managed change, and inspires others to follow.

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Black Americans and Tobacco  

The onset of slavery in America can be directly linked to the beginning of tobacco production in this country. Though many factors contributed to slavery in the New World, tobacco was the main reason that slavery first flourished as an industry.

By the mid-1600s the slave trade flourished with established routes connecting North America, Africa and the West Indies. Manufactured goods were traded for African Natives; the African Natives were taken to the West Indies to be broken in before being taken to mainland North America. . . .

Tobacco companies began advertising in Black newspapers and magazines in the 1940s, when typically they would profile prominent African Americans in their ads. To lure more African Americans to smoke, the tobacco industry would combine images with remarkable claims in their advertising. In one Lucky Strike ad, gold medal Olympian Jesse Owens states, “I smoke Luckies. So do Mrs. Owens and my eldest daughter. To all of us, Luckies taste better.”iv

In the 1930s, menthol brands were introduced, and by the 1960 it was clear to tobacco companies that menthol brand popularity was due to Black Americans consumption of menthol cigarettes. . . .

What can be done? Know your personal and cultural history. Tobacco production has exploited African American people. You can also plan to attend the training program, Follow the Signs II to learn more about the impact of Big Tobacco in Black communities and what you can do about it. This training is designed for Denver area youth and community leaders. If you use tobacco stop! Also support others who desire to stop using tobacco because the struggle isn’t theirs, it’s ours.

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• AUDIO: The link between smoking and darker skin  

new research says just how addictive smoking is for you depends on the color of your skin. "Living on Earth's" Ike Sriskandarajah filed this report.

Dr. Gary King from Pennsylvania State University studied nicotine -- the highly addictive stimulant that makes people crave cigarettes -- and melanin, a compound your body makes that determines how dark you are. And he found a connection.

According to Dr. King, the melanin is strongly attracted to nicotine, and the way it works is when you light up a cigarette, the tobacco and all the chemicals created when it burns into your mouth, into your lungs and the rest of your organs, including your biggest organ ... skin.

"Skin does react like every other organ in the body unto nicotine and the other 4,000 chemicals that are consumed when one actually smokes," said Dr. King. "And that binding process in and of itself may lead to greater dependence."

Inhaling thousands of chemicals is not a good idea. But it is especially bad for people with dark, melanin-rich skin. That's because melanin grabs and hangs onto the nicotine.

Greater dependence means it's much harder for darker skinned people to kick the habit. In fact white smokers on average are 15 percent better at quitting than blacks. . . .

Which is why Dr. King's next step is to survey dark and light skinned people all over the world. His findings are based on a pretty small sample -- 150 subjects, all of whom are African American.

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The Smoking Consequences Questionnaire: Factor structure and predictive validity among Spanish-speaking Latino smokers in the United States  

Introduction: Much of the existing research on smoking outcome expectancies has been guided by the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire (SCQ ). Although the original version of the SCQ has been modified over time for use in different populations, none of the existing versions have been evaluated for use among Spanish-speaking Latino smokers in the United States.

Methods: The present study evaluated the factor structure and predictive validity of the 3 previously validated versions of the SCQ—the original, the SCQ-Adult, and the SCQ-Spanish, which was developed with Spanish-speaking smokers in Spain—among Spanish-speaking Latino smokers in Texas.

Results: The SCQ-Spanish represented the least complex solution. Each of the SCQ-Spanish scales had good internal consistency, and the predictive validity of the SCQ-Spanish was partially supported. Nearly all the SCQ-Spanish scales predicted withdrawal severity even after controlling for demographics and dependence. Boredom Reduction predicted smoking relapse across the 5- and 12-week follow-up assessments in a multivariate model that also controlled for demographics and dependence.

Discussion: Our results support use of the SCQ-Spanish with Spanish-speaking Latino smokers in the United States.

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Living in U.S. Raises Cancer Risk for Hispanics 

The risk of cancer for Hispanics increases by 40% when they move to the U.S., according to a new study.

The risks of specific cancers, however, differ widely among the Hispanic subgroups of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans, the researchers also found.

On the positive side, U.S. Hispanics generally have lower cancer incidence than non-Hispanic U.S. whites, says Paulo Pinheiro, MD, PhD, a researcher in the department of epidemiology and public health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida, who led the study.

"On the negative side, they increase their risk when they come here for the majority of the analyzed [in his study] cancers," Pinheiro tells WebMD. The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &Prevention. . . .

* Cubans were comparable with whites in cancer rates, including low rates of cervical and stomach cancers. Cuban men were most afflicted by cancer associated with tobacco, such as lung and larynx, bladder, kidney, and pancreas.

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Moving To The US Increases Cancer Risk For Hispanics 

Results of a new study confirm trends that different Hispanic population groups have higher incidence rates of certain cancers and worse cancer outcomes if they live in the United States, than they do if they live in their homelands.

"Hispanics are not all the same with regard to their cancer experience," said Paulo S. Pinheiro, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

"Targeted interventions for cancer prevention and control should take into account the specificity of each Hispanic subgroup: Cubans, Puerto Ricans or Mexicans," added Pinheiro, who is the study's lead researcher. Pinheiro received support from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

These results are published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. . . .

Cuban males had higher incidence of tobacco-related cancers; . . .

Patients should become better informed of some of the positive aspects of their original lifestyles and should be strongly discouraged from adopting unfavorable lifestyles that may be more common in the United States, such as unhealthy diets, smoking and alcohol use, according to Pinheiro and Ramirez.

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Smoking, High Blood Pressure And Diabetes In Mid-life Can Lead To Dementia 

Middle aged people who smoke, have high blood pressure or diabetes are far more likely to develop dementia in later life, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

People should consider modifying their lifestyle in mid-life to avoid developing dementia, claims the US research.

Dementia is a growing public health problem affecting older people in developed countries. In the US, where the research took place, estimates show that one in six people older than 70 have dementia. Estimates are that the number of people with dementia will grow threefold by 2050, compared with 2000.

Previous studies have shown that the presence of cardiovascular risk factors including high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and smoking increase the risk of developing subsequent dementia, but have often failed to show the relationship.

Researchers from the universities of Minnesota, North Carolina and John Hopkins and the University of Mississippi Medical Center studied more than 11,000 people aged 46-70 who were participants in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study in 1990-92.

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