Tobacco industry marketing and selleck chemicals Gemcitabine adver
According to 2005 data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Latinos now comprise over 14% of the nation’s population and are the largest and fastest growing minority group in the United States (Bernstein, 2006). Although the prevalence of smoking is lower among Latinos than the general population (15.2% vs. 20.8%), the adverse consequences of tobacco use on Latino health are severe (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2007). For example, three of the four leading causes of death among Latinos are related to smoking (cancer, heart disease, and stroke), and lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among Latino men and the second leading cause among Latino women (National Cancer Institute [NCI], 2005).

Moreover, Latinos experience tobacco-related disparities associated with access to treatment, tobacco marketing, cultural and language barriers (Bolen, Rhodes, Powell-Griner, Bland, & Holtzman, 1997), and receipt of physician advice to quit smoking (CDC, 2000). Thus, research addressing tobacco use and dependence among minority groups such as Latinos has been identified as a major public health priority (Fiore et al., 2000; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). Latino smokers may be relatively unique among racial/ethnic groups with respect to nondaily, low-level daily (i.e., 1�C5 cigarettes/day), or light daily smoking (i.e., 6�C10 cigarettes/day; Fagan, Moolchan, Lawrence, Fernander, & Ponder, 2007; Okuyemi et al., 2002; S. H. Zhu, Pulvers, Zhuang, & Baezconde-Garbanati, 2007).

Data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (1991�C1993) indicated that 27.4% of Latinos were low-level daily smokers, as compared with 18.4% of Black and 9.3% of White smokers (Kandel & Chen, 2000). Unfortunately, low-level smokers have typically been excluded from randomized clinical trials of smoking cessation interventions, perhaps due to perceptions of increased need for research among those with higher levels of tobacco consumption (S. H. Zhu et al., 2007). However, because low-level smokers are at elevated risk of negative health outcomes when compared with former or never-smokers (NCI, 1998), understanding the associations of low-level smoking with tobacco dependence, withdrawal, and cessation is an important public health aim and could lead to specific treatment approaches targeted at these smokers.

Research suggests that cigarette consumption may be a proxy for physical dependence on tobacco, such that low-level smokers demonstrate less dependence than heavier smokers AV-951 (Kandel & Chen, 2000). As a result, low-level smokers are more likely to attempt to quit, to experience less withdrawal (Shiffman, Paty, Gnys, Kassel, & Elash, 1995), and to maintain abstinence than are heavier smokers (cf., S. H. Zhu, Sun, Hawkins, Pierce, & Cummins, 2003).