What You Don’t Know About Smoking
Posted by edit 1 on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment
it’s no news that smoking is bad for you. Lighting up is so harmful, as this article went to press, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed legislation allowing the United States Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products for the first time in history. The industry must now slap bigger warning labels on cigarette packaging, drop deceptive terms like “light” and “low tar,” and cease selling candy and fruit-flavored smokes. The FDA will also have the unprecedented power to regulate the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.
Yet there are specific risks for the one in five African-American adults who still smoke cigarettes. If the threat of lung cancer has not convinced you or a loved one to quit, these surprising facts should.
l did you know?
There’s a nicotine-melanin link.
Nicotine, the addictive ingredient in cigarettes, may be more harmful to African Americans than whites. A few years ago, researchers began to explore the possibility that nicotine accumulates in melanin, the pigment that gives skin its color. More recently, they examined just how the link between nicotine and melanin might affect black smokers. Gary King, Ph.D., professor of behavioral health at Pennsylvania State University, and his colleagues recruited 150 African-American smokers and looked at three key variables. First, they asked how many cigarettes participants smoked per day. Second, they used a standard questionnaire to gauge their dependence on nicotine. Finally, they measured the amount of cotinine—a nicotine byproduct—in participants’ blood. What they found was a correlation between higher concentrations of melanin and greater tobacco use, exposure and dependence. In other words, the darker the skin, the more smokers were affected by nicotine.
King and his colleague, Valerie Yerger, an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California, San Francisco, are careful not to generalize about this preliminary result. But their research, published in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, suggests that darker-skinned people may store more nicotine in the body. “Nicotine has been shown to stay connected to melanin for a long period of time, even up to several years,” Yerger notes. The greater storage of nicotine may mean that blacks are exposed to more of the addictive substance longer, resulting in greater dependence. This finding might explain why African Americans have more difficulty quitting smoking and suffer far more from tobacco-related diseases.
l did you know?
Mentholated cigarettes may be harder to quit.
It’s no secret that African-American smokers prefer mentholated cigarettes. But these cool-tasting smokes may be more difficult to shake, says recent research. A study, published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, found that African-American and Latino smokers of mentholated cigarettes had less success quitting than non-menthol smokers. In the study, blacks who smoked menthol had half the quit rate of blacks who did not. That was the case even though menthol smokers actually smoked fewer cigarettes per day.
Study co-author Kunal K. Gandhi, an instructor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, believes the lower cessation rates stem from the effects of menthol. “The menthol increases the cooling effects and masks the harshness of the nicotine,” Gandhi says. “[Smokers] take bigger puffs from their cigarettes and that allows them to get more nicotine from one puff and one cigarette. So they are more dependent.”
Inhaling more addictive nicotine isn’t the only additional risk menthol smokers face. “Along with the nicotine, all the carcinogens are inhaled to a greater degree,” Gandhi states. That includes carbon monoxide and other toxins that may contribute to the higher lung cancer and other tobacco-related disease rates among blacks.
l did you know?
Stress may be keeping
women hooked.
African-American women struggle to quit smoking although we tend to start smoking later in life and smoke fewer cigarettes per day than white women or black men. Some experts believe that’s because we smoke to cope with stress—and not just the garden-variety kind. In a relatively recent study, Anita Fernander, Ph.D., assistant professor in the behavioral science department at the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine, examined the connection between race-related stress and smoking in black women. “Race-related stress is basically the perception of racism, reports of discrimination that people experience in their lives,” she explains. Her findings? That the more race-related stress women reported, the more likely they were to be stressed overall and to smoke.
All women experience stress, but the type of stress caused by discrimination adds to black women’s burdens. Race-related stress stems from situations like, say, being followed and treated with suspicion while browsing in a store. Excessive stress and the lower incomes of many black women make for a toxic mix. “If there aren’t substitutes to cope, black women are going to be more tied to maintaining the smoking habit,” Fernander says. African-American women, who tend to have lower incomes, might not have the opportunity or means to benefit from stress-reduction strategies like exercise, for example; they have no safe spaces to work out in their neighborhoods or can’t afford gym memberships. The lack of alternative stress busters might help explain not just our difficulty quitting, but greater rates of tobacco-related health problems such as lung cancer—the leading cancer killer in women.
l did you know?
Tobacco companies target us.
It’s no accident that a majority of black smokers puff on the more addictive and lethal mentholated cigarettes. According to the American Lung Association, advertising expenditures for mentholated cigarettes in magazines rose from 13 to 49 percent between 1985 and 2005. And tobacco companies have been creative in how they appeal to us in terms of our culture, with campaigns featuring hip-hop music and themes. “That’s one reason why African Americans smoke more mentholated cigarettes, because they are the targeted population for the tobacco companies,” Gandhi says.
With rising tobacco taxes, lower-income African Americans are also susceptible to industry messages and sales techniques. “When you have less money, you want to make the maximum use of one cigarette,” Gandhi notes. In other words, menthol smokes give us more bang for the buck. “The tobacco industry’s main target of the marketing of mentholated cigarettes are groups that have less money to spend, youth, just to basically get people hooked onto fewer cigarettes,” Gandhi asserts. Women, too, have been seduced by appeals to our desire to appear young, sexy and independent. Y
San Francisco-based freelancer Ziba Kashef writes frequently about health issues.
It’s no news that smoking is bad for you. Lighting up is so harmful, as this article went to press, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed legislation allowing the United States Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products for the first time in history. The industry must now slap bigger warning labels on cigarette packaging, drop deceptive terms like “light” and “low tar,” and cease selling candy and fruit-flavored smokes. The FDA will also have the unprecedented power to regulate the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.
Yet there are specific risks for the one in five African-American adults who still smoke cigarettes. If the threat of lung cancer has not convinced you or a loved one to quit, these surprising facts should.
did you know?
There’s a nicotine-melanin link.
Nicotine, the addictive ingredient in cigarettes, may be more harmful to African Americans than whites. A few years ago, researchers began to explore the possibility that nicotine accumulates in melanin, the pigment that gives skin its color. More recently, they examined just how the link between nicotine and melanin might affect black smokers. Gary King, Ph.D., professor of behavioral health at Pennsylvania State University, and his colleagues recruited 150 African-American smokers and looked at three key variables. First, they asked how many cigarettes participants smoked per day. Second, they used a standard questionnaire to gauge their dependence on nicotine. Finally, they measured the amount of cotinine—a nicotine byproduct—in participants’ blood. What they found was a correlation between higher concentrations of melanin and greater tobacco use, exposure and dependence. In other words, the darker the skin, the more smokers were affected by nicotine.
King and his colleague, Valerie Yerger, an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California, San Francisco, are careful not to generalize about this preliminary result. But their research, published in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, suggests that darker-skinned people may store more nicotine in the body. “Nicotine has been shown to stay connected to melanin for a long period of time, even up to several years,” Yerger notes. The greater storage of nicotine may mean that blacks are exposed to more of the addictive substance longer, resulting in greater dependence. This finding might explain why African Americans have more difficulty quitting smoking and suffer far more from tobacco-related diseases.
did you know?
Mentholated cigarettes may be harder to quit.
It’s no secret that African-American smokers prefer mentholated cigarettes. But these cool-tasting smokes may be more difficult to shake, says recent research. A study, published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, found that African-American and Latino smokers of mentholated cigarettes had less success quitting than non-menthol smokers. In the study, blacks who smoked menthol had half the quit rate of blacks who did not. That was the case even though menthol smokers actually smoked fewer cigarettes per day.
Study co-author Kunal K. Gandhi, an instructor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, believes the lower cessation rates stem from the effects of menthol. “The menthol increases the cooling effects and masks the harshness of the nicotine,” Gandhi says. “[Smokers] take bigger puffs from their cigarettes and that allows them to get more nicotine from one puff and one cigarette. So they are more dependent.”
Inhaling more addictive nicotine isn’t the only additional risk menthol smokers face. “Along with the nicotine, all the carcinogens are inhaled to a greater degree,” Gandhi states. That includes carbon monoxide and other toxins that may contribute to the higher lung cancer and other tobacco-related disease rates among blacks.
did you know?
Stress may be keeping women hooked.
African-American women struggle to quit smoking although we tend to start smoking later in life and smoke fewer cigarettes per day than white women or black men. Some experts believe that’s because we smoke to cope with stress—and not just the garden-variety kind. In a relatively recent study, Anita Fernander, Ph.D., assistant professor in the behavioral science department at the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine, examined the connection between race-related stress and smoking in black women. “Race-related stress is basically the perception of racism, reports of discrimination that people experience in their lives,” she explains. Her findings? That the more race-related stress women reported, the more likely they were to be stressed overall and to smoke.
All women experience stress, but the type of stress caused by discrimination adds to black women’s burdens. Race-related stress stems from situations like, say, being followed and treated with suspicion while browsing in a store. Excessive stress and the lower incomes of many black women make for a toxic mix. “If there aren’t substitutes to cope, black women are going to be more tied to maintaining the smoking habit,” Fernander says. African-American women, who tend to have lower incomes, might not have the opportunity or means to benefit from stress-reduction strategies like exercise, for example; they have no safe spaces to work out in their neighborhoods or can’t afford gym memberships. The lack of alternative stress busters might help explain not just our difficulty quitting, but greater rates of tobacco-related health problems such as lung cancer—the leading cancer killer in women.
did you know?
Tobacco companies target us.
It’s no accident that a majority of black smokers puff on the more addictive and lethal mentholated cigarettes. According to the American Lung Association, advertising expenditures for mentholated cigarettes in magazines rose from 13 to 49 percent between 1985 and 2005. And tobacco companies have been creative in how they appeal to us in terms of our culture, with campaigns featuring hip-hop music and themes. “That’s one reason why African Americans smoke more mentholated cigarettes, because they are the targeted population for the tobacco companies,” Gandhi says.
With rising tobacco taxes, lower-income African Americans are also susceptible to industry messages and sales techniques. “When you have less money, you want to make the maximum use of one cigarette,” Gandhi notes. In other words, menthol smokes give us more bang for the buck. “The tobacco industry’s main target of the marketing of mentholated cigarettes are groups that have less money to spend, youth, just to basically get people hooked onto fewer cigarettes,” Gandhi asserts. Women, too, have been seduced by appeals to our desire to appear young, sexy and independent.
San Francisco-based freelancer Ziba Kashef writes frequently about health issues.
