Does late-onset smoking compared to early-onset smoking improve cessation or mortality in African American adult smokers?
Late-onset smoking does not provide cessation or mortality benefits for African Americans, highlighting the need for tobacco prevention efforts targeting beyond teenage years.
This study indicates that late-onset smoking is not only the norm among African American adult smokers, but that late- versus early-onset smoking (ie, delaying onset) does not appear to afford any benefits for African Americans in terms of cessation or mortality. These results suggest that prevention and intervention efforts need to consider individual groups (not just overall averages) and that tobacco control efforts need to be targeted beyond the teenage years. Tobacco programs and regulatory policies focused on prevention should expand their perspective to include later ages of initiation, to avoid widening tobacco-related health disparities.
Roberts et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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