ABSTRACT
Recent evidence released by the U.S. Surgeon General reveals an alarming rise in tobacco use among minority teen-agers in the United States (USDHHS, 1998). Examining smoking rates among four groups, African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics, the report finds that cigarette use increased among all four groups but was significantly higher for African Americans and Hispanics. Especially distressing is the rise in smoking rates among African-American youth, since declines in this group in the 1970s and 1980s had been considered a public health success. But from 1991 to 1997 smoking rates among African-American teenagers have increased 80 percent, and African-American men die from lung cancer at a rate SO percent higher than Whites. Each year approximately 45,000 African Americans die from totally preventable smoking- related diseases.
