The African American Youth Smoking Experience: An Overview.

Introduction: Beginning in the late 1970s, a very sharp decline in cigarette smoking prevalence was observed among African American (AA) high school seniors compared with a more modest decline among whites. This historic decline resulted in a lower prevalence of cigarette smoking among AA youth that has persisted for several decades.

Methods: We synthesized information contained in the research literature and tobacco industry documents to provide an account of past influences on cigarette smoking behavior among AA youth to help understand the reasons for these historically lower rates of cigarette smoking.

Understanding Tobacco Use Behaviors Among African Americans: Progress, Critical Gaps, and Opportunities.

Introduction: Although multiple factors likely influence the differences between African Americans (AAs) and whites in cardiovascular disease and lung cancer mortality rates, historical patterns of tobacco use, particularly cigarette smoking, are the major contributors. This issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research presents original research, a review, and commentaries that will serve to advance our understanding of several relevant behavioral similarities and differences between AAs and whites.

Behavioral Analysis: Here, we illustrate how the diverging trends in cigarette smoking between AA and white high school seniors observed since the mid-1970s were influenced by patterns of ever use and current use among ever users.

Guidelines on nicotine dose selection for in vivo research.

Rationale: This review provides insight for the judicious selection of nicotine dose ranges and routes of administration for in vivo studies. The literature is replete with reports in which a dosaging regimen chosen for a specific nicotine-mediated response was suboptimal for the species used. In many cases, such discrepancies could be attributed to the complex variables comprising species-specific in vivo responses to acute or chronic nicotine exposure.

Patient-appraised couple emotion management and disease management among Chinese American patients with type 2 diabetes.

Family context exerts a strong influence on disease management among patients with chronic disease, but it is not clear which aspects of family life are most influential. This study examined the linkages between patient-appraised couple emotion management (conflict resolution, expressiveness, and respect) and disease management (biological, morale/depression, quality of life, and behavioral) among a relatively understudied group, Chinese American patients with type 2 diabetes. Significant main effects were found between patient-appraised couple emotion management, especially conflict resolution, and the morale component of disease management, but not the biological or behavioral components; both diabetes-specific and general relationship qualities (marital satisfaction) were independently linked to disease management.

The African Americanization of menthol cigarette use in the United States.

Today, over 70% of African American smokers prefer menthol cigarettes, compared with 30% of White smokers. This unique social phenomenon was principally occasioned by the tobacco industry's masterful manipulation of the burgeoning Black, urban, segregated, consumer market in the 1960s. Through the use of television and other advertising media, coupled with culturally tailored images and messages, the tobacco industry "African Americanized" menthol cigarettes.