http://www.tobacco.org/newsfeed/category/ethnic.rss Latest top tobacco news headlines en-us http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_adctlid=v%7Cjq2q43wvsl855o%7Cx48lz4ng4qou43&xid=x48l5x5rfq8saa&done=search.php%3Fsearchparams%3Da%253A5%253A%257Bs%253A9%253A%2522issuedate%2522%253BN%253Bs%253A6%253A%2522author%2522%253BN%253Bs%253A5%253A%2522title%2522%253BN%253Bs%253A4%253A%2522body%2522%253BN%253Bs%253A12%253A%2522article_type%2522%253Bs%253A17%253A%25221192656582969_969%2522%253B%257D http://tobacco.org/news/265306.html the numbers tell a depressing story in Asian-American communities in particular. Research has shown that the numbers of deaths due to cancer is rising faster in Asian Americans than in any other ethnic group. In addition, lung cancer rates are 18 percent higher among Southeast Asian men than for Caucasians. And Asian American and Pacific Islander females are actually the only racial, ethnic or gender group in the nation for which cancer is the leading cause of death. In 2005, 1 out of 5 Asian American males smoked. Here in California, 36 percent of Korean American men and 32 percent of Vietnamese American men smoke cigarettes. Among cigarette smokers in California and Hawaii, Native Hawaiians and other Polynesians are more susceptible to and have higher incidence rates of lung cancer (263.9/100,000) than Whites, Japanese Americans, and Latinos. The numbers don't tell the story of the pain that these grim numbers symbolize for our families and friends. . . . The best way to seriously cut smoking rates is by ensuring that Medi-Cal, the state's health insurance program for the elderly, disabled and poor, covers the full range of smoking cessation services. Today. Medi-Cal only provides partial smoking cessation benefits and too few patients or doctors even know about these benefits. What's worse is that Medi-Cal's policy does not reflect the most current recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and does not cover all FDA-approved smoking cessation medications. That needs to change. Assembly Bill 2662, (Dymally, D-Los Angeles) which is supported by the California Medical Association and the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, will increase public awareness of the benefits available for Medi-Cal recipients in order to help smokers quit. . . . For decades, cigarette makers have prayed on the Asian community. Now, it's time to kick the habit once and for all. With Medi-Cal providing smoking cessation treatment for all recipients, California's Asian community may be able to break the tobacco addiction for good. Capitol Weekly Thu, 15 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://gawker.com/389890/menthol-cigarettes-are-not-flavored-says-dr-kool-newport http://tobacco.org/news/265241.html How popular are menthol cigarettes? Popular enough to reverse logic. The government is set to pass a bill that will ban "flavored" cigarettes, but menthols will be excluded. Because menthol, of course, is not a flavor. What menthol is is close to $20 billion in sales for the tobacco industry. As well as an important part of African-American culture! Tobacco companies advertise menthol brands disproportionately to minority communities, and it obviously works, although nobody really knows why. What we do know is that this bill is perfect--it protects my precious Kools, while saving America from the strawberry menace: . . . But let's be fair, those crying racial discrimination in advertising: how do you explain THIS? Gawker commenting+389890.5664579@gawker.com (Hamilton Nolan) Tue, 13 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-menthol14-2008may14,0,1261443.story http://tobacco.org/news/265240.html The industry maintains that menthol carries no proven health risk. But that's a red herring. No one is accusing strawberry or pineapple flavoring of causing cancer either, but removing them will make smoking less palatable to some. For whatever reason, menthol makes cigarettes more palatable for blacks. And that is a real risk. As a former official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the New York Times: "Menthol induces smoking in the African American community and subsequently serves as a direct link to African American death and disease." What we're asking for is honesty: The next time the anti-smoking lobby, Philip Morris and certain legislators say this legislation is needed to protect our children, they should have the decency to put the word "our" in quotations. Los Angeles Times Wed, 14 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-12-2008/0004810966&EDATE= http://tobacco.org/news/265213.html Esperanza, the largest Hispanic faith-based organization in the country, today announces their support of H.R. 1108, "The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act." The legislation gives FDA regulatory authority over tobacco products. "We encourage Congress to pass this important legislation this year. H.R. 1108 has broad bi-partisan support and could genuinely help our people," said the President of Esperanza Rev. Luis Cortes. "Within our Hispanic community lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. With 16.2 percent of Hispanic adults smoking cigarettes, a significant part of our community is at high-risk." PR Newswire Fri, 09 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/13mentholside.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/265200.html No one really knows how the African-American preference for menthol cigarettes developed in the first place. Some scientists speculate that cultural and taste preferences provide a partial explanation. The Rev. Jesse Brown of Philadelphia, an opponent of smoking, calls it a “chicken and egg” conundrum. But tobacco industry marketing has played a role. The migration of African-Americans to urban manufacturing centers after World War II, coupled with the emergence of black-oriented newspapers and magazines, created various opportunities for niche marketing. In the case of cigarettes, with research showing a slight black preference for Kools, a menthol brand, the industry saw an opening to appeal to black smokers. Or at least that is the explanation central to a paper on the history of menthol marketing by Phillip S. Gardiner, the research administrator of a tobacco disease program at the University of California, Oakland. . . . Dr. Gardiner’s paper, published in 2004 in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, also notes that by the 1980s, Brown & Williamson, the maker of Kool, had started the Kool Jazz Festival to appeal to the same market. More recently, hip-hop artists have helped promote Kool New York Times Tue, 13 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/13menthol.html http://tobacco.org/news/265199.html Some public health experts are questioning why menthol, the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette choice of African-American smokers, is receiving special protection as Congress tries to regulate tobacco for the first time. The legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products, would try to reduce smoking’s allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon. But those new strictures would exempt menthol — even though menthol masks the harsh taste of cigarettes for beginners and may make it harder for the addicted to kick the smoking habit. For years, public health authorities have worried that menthol might be a factor in high cancer rates in African-Americans. The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. . . . Even the head of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, a nonprofit group that has been adamantly against menthol, acknowledges that the ingredient needed to be off the bargaining table — for now — because he does not want to imperil the bill’s chances. “The bottom line is we want the legislation,” said William S. Robinson, the group’s executive director. “But we want to reserve the right to address this issue at some critical point because of the percentage of people of African descent who use mentholated products.” . . . In five large studies of menthol to date, only one has found higher rates of cancer among menthol smokers than nonmenthol smokers, and only in men. But a growing body of evidence suggests that menthol makes it harder to kick the smoking habit New York Times Tue, 13 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7384244.stm http://tobacco.org/news/264682.html The campaign has the backing of the Scottish Government. ASH Scotland will launch an evaluation of pilot projects in Glasgow at an event attended by Public Health Minister Shona Robison. The group's research shows that 41% of adults who live in deprived areas smoke, compared to 13% in the least deprived areas. In the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area, where smoking is the highest in Scotland, 34% of all deaths in the 35-59 age group are attributed to smoking. BBC Online UK-Scotland Mon, 05 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.medwire-news.md/46/74652/Oncology/Genotype-cigarette_smoke_interaction_shown_in_breast_cancer.html http://tobacco.org/news/264483.html Cigarette smoke exposure substantially increases the risk for developing breast cancer among premenopausal women with certain polymorphisms in interleukin 6 (IL6) and estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1), results of a case-control study demonstrate. The findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that genotype and cigarette smoke can interact to increase the risk for breast cancer. One study recently reported by MedWire News found that smokers with the slow-metabolizing N-acetyltransferase 2 genotype face an increased risk for the disease compared with non-smokers. For the present study, Martha Slattery (University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA) and colleagues enrolled 3128 non-Hispanic White women, including 1527 with breast cancer and 1601 controls, along with 798 cases and 924 controls of Hispanic/American Indian ethnicity. . . . Notably, exposure to more than 10 hours of passive smoke per week was associated with a 3.0- and 4.4-fold increased breast cancer risk in Hispanic/American Indian and non-Hispanic White premenopausal GG rs2069832 carriers, respectively, compared with women with the wild-type genotype who reported less than 1 hour of exposure. In addition women of either ethnicity group who smoked more than 15 cigarette pack-years and had the ESR1 Xba1 AA genotype faced a 3-fold increased risk for breast cancer compared with nonsmokers with the wild-type allele. "Our data suggest that this risk may be influenced by underlying genetic susceptibility and that mechanisms involving both estrogen and inflammation may be important in defining risk," Slattery and colleagues conclude in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. MedWire News Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080428/GPG0101/804280535 http://tobacco.org/news/264218.html Chico was one of two people who shared their experiences with tobacco use at an event directed at the Latino community about the dangers of smoking on Sunday at St. Willebrord Parish in downtown Green Bay. About 75 people attended. After almost 30 years of smoking -- Chico was 14 when he started -- he finally made the decision to quit because of his children, the youngest of whom is 7 months. Chico also suspects secondhand smoke was responsible for two cancer deaths in his family. Lung cancer -- "cancer pulmonar" in Spanish -- is a leading cause of cancer death for Hispanic men and the second leading cause for Hispanic women. Green Bay Press-Gazette mjaganna@greenbaypressgazette.com (Malavika Jagannathan • mjaganna) Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/105343.php http://tobacco.org/news/264201.html A new study from the American Cancer Society finds black and Hispanic smokers are less likely than whites to receive and use smoking cessation advice and aids. The study, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, also finds men and those without a usual source of medical care were less likely to be screened for tobacco use and receive advice to quit. Members of several racial and ethnic minority populations bear a disproportionate share of the adverse health consequences of tobacco use. There is strong evidence that interventions, ranging from a health care worker's brief advice to quit to extensive counseling and the use of pharmaceutical and behavioral adjuncts, can considerably improve cessation rates in smokers. Smoking is associated with socioeconomic disadvantage and is an important contributor to inequalities in health. For their study, American Cancer Society researchers led by Vilma Cokkinides, Ph.D., analyzed survey results from 4756 smokers Medical News TODAY Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Health/2008/04/25/minorities_get_less_help_quitting_smoking/2344/ http://tobacco.org/news/264107.html African-Americans and Hispanics are less likely than whites to receive help in quitting smoking, the American Cancer Society says. The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, also found men and those lacking a usual source of medical care were less likely to receive advice to quit smoking. UPI Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.physorg.com/news128258748.html http://tobacco.org/news/264016.html A new study from the American Cancer Society finds black and Hispanic smokers are less likely than whites to receive and use smoking cessation advice and aids. The study, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, also finds men and those without a usual source of medical care were less likely to be screened for tobacco use and receive advice to quit. Members of several racial and ethnic minority populations bear a disproportionate share of the adverse health consequences of tobacco use. There is strong evidence that interventions, ranging from a health care worker’s brief advice to quit to extensive counseling and the use of pharmaceutical and behavioral adjuncts, can considerably improve cessation rates in smokers. Smoking is associated with socioeconomic disadvantage and is an important contributor to inequalities in health. For their study, American Cancer Society researchers led by Vilma Cokkinides, Ph.D., analyzed survey results from 4756 smokers physorg.com Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/people,874,boriss-wobbly-thursday-over-smoking-and-race,25283 http://tobacco.org/news/263524.html Boris Johnson's mayoral election campaign faltered today. "Whether it turns out to be just a 'Wobbly Thursday' for Boris, or a watershed moment will depend on how much his enemies are able to make of it," a campaign observer told The First Post. . . . "My children are a quarter Indian - so put that in your pipe and smoke it." The debate came on the same day that Johnson had to 'clarify' his position on the London smoking ban. On Wednesday, in an online Q&A organised by the Sun newspaper, he suggested that individual London boroughs should be able to overturn the smoking ban. "What is the point of having local democracy if we don't leave decisions like this to a local level?" . . . Today, Boris issued his 'clarification', saying that he had been expressing his personal view about smoking and democracy. "Personally, I do not like smoking and believe that pubs and clubs are better places since the ban came in." The First Post UK Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/13playnj.html?scp=2&sq=cigarette&st=nyt http://tobacco.org/news/263199.html Transforming the black box theater of Luna Stage into an evocative replica of Memphis's Lorraine Motel, circa 1968, was challenge enough for Charlie Corcoran, who designed the sets for "The Man in Room 306. . . . A strikingly human Dr. King emerges. Exhausted from lack of sleep, hounded by J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. and under siege by white supremacists and the burgeoning Black Power movement, Mr. Edwards's Dr. King wolfs down any morsels of food still left on the room service tray and tries, unsuccessfully, to light a tiny cigarette butt. "Don't tell Coretta," he begs, admitting that he promised her he would quit. New York Times Sun, 13 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-03-2008/0004785854&EDATE= http://tobacco.org/news/262645.html With mounting evidence that many Americans remain the invisible people with cancer who don't get regular screening examinations, smoke at higher rates, are frequently diagnosed after their cancer has spread and, therefore, die more frequently and more quickly from this disease, the Intercultural Cancer Council Caucus (ICCC) today issued a 12-step action plan outlining how the Administration and the U.S. Congress can begin to help those cancer patients who are falling through the cracks of the healthcare system. In conjunction with ICC's 11th Biennial Symposium on Minorities, the Medically Underserved, & Cancer held in Washington, DC, the ICC Caucus released a new report -- From Awareness to Action: A Renewed Call to Eliminate the Unequal Burden of Cancer -- that provides realistic goals for helping racial and ethnic minorities, those living in rural areas, the elderly and the poor who remain at greatest risk for developing and dying from cancer. Issued as a nationwide call to action, the report states that unless more is done to address the unequal burden of cancer faced by ethnic minorities, the elderly and the poor, "disparities in cancer care will only increase over the next half-century." The new report, designed to provide the most up-to-date information about disparities in cancer rates and death among the nation's medically underserved, finds that certain Americans remain largely invisible to the healthcare system and are the least likely to have access to quality cancer care at all points in the process -- from screenings and diagnosis to access to state-of-the-art cancer therapies and end-of-life palliative care. Specifically, the report reveals a widening gap in cancer care among American Indians and Alaskan Natives and those living in the out islands of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa and other Pacific Islands, who now have cancer incidence and death rates similar to third world countries. . . . lung cancer is now the most common type of cancer death in eight of the nine Indian Health Service (IHS) Areas. PR Newswire Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT