New Surgeon General’s Report Targets Teen Smoking Among Minorities

WASHINGTON--Minority teenagers are smoking more, and this threatens to undermine the progress against lung cancer among minority populations that was made during the early 1990s.

David Satcher, MD, in his first report as Surgeon General, focused on four racial and ethnic minority groups: African-Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Asian American/Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics.

Rates of tobacco use among adolescents in these racial and ethnic minority groups have begun to rise rapidly, especially among African-American youths, who had the greatest decline during the 1970s and 1980s but the steepest increase in use in the 1990s--80% over the last 6 years, three times higher than the increase among white teens.