Report finds Puerto Ricans and Cuban Americans with highest smoking rates among Latino populations

Report finds Puerto Ricans and Cuban Americans with highest smoking rates among Latino populations. Little is known about tobacco use and its related health effects among Hispanic/Latino subpopulations in the United States such as Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans.

Little is known about tobacco use and its related health effects among Hispanic/Latino subpopulations in the United States such as Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans. The public health field has generally treated Hispanics/Latinos as a homogenous whole when investigating tobacco use. That oversight limits the generation of actionable data and does little to inform policy or education campaigns that could begin to address the considerable tobacco-related health disparities between the general population and the Hispanic/Latino subgroups.

A survey Truth Initiative published in 2014 examined cigarette use among Hispanic/Latino college students. Our results showed significant variations in smoking rates within Hispanic/Latino subgroups. Cigarette use among Dominican Americans was at 9 percent, followed by Mexican Americans at 22 percent. Significantly higher cigarette use rates were found among Puerto Ricans (34 percent) and Cuban Americans (37 percent). This disparity between Hispanic/Latino subgroups underlines that Hispanics/Latinos are not a single homogenous community.