Funding This publication selleck chem inhibitor was made possible by grant number 1 R01 TW007927-01 from the Fogarty International Center, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, within the National Institutes of Health. The European Union and the European Social Fund also have provided financial support to the project under the grant agreement no. T��MOP 4.2.1./B-09/1/KMR-2010-0003. Declaration of Interests None declared. Acknowledgments The author thanks N��ra M��rocza for technical assistance in data collection. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official view of the National Institutes of Health.
Tobacco use remains a significant public health problem in the United States.

Despite rates of tobacco use comparable to other ethnic groups, Blacks experience elevated risk for tobacco-related mortality (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009a; Horner et al., 2009; National Center for Health Statistics, 2008). The Healthy People 2010 goals for the nation are to eliminate health-related disparities that occur by race/ethnicity and reduce the prevalence of smoking to 12% by 2010 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). Declines in tobacco use among Blacks have stagnated, declining only 2% over the past ten years from a prevalence of 24.3% in 1999 to 22.0% in 2009 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001, 2009b). Hence, there is a need to identify barriers to smoking cessation for Blacks.

In the general population, a strong relationship has been demonstrated between mental illness and tobacco use across a full range of psychiatric disorders (Colton & Manderscheid, 2006; Prochaska, Fromont, Hudmon, & Cataldo, 2009; Schroeder & Morris, 2010; Ziedonis et al., 2008). Epidemiological studies have documented a higher smoking prevalence, lower quit rates, and heavier smoking for persons with schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, posttraumatic stress disorder, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse relative to those without mental illness (Breslau, Davis, & Schultz, 2003; Grant, Hasin, Chou, Stinson, & Dawson, 2004; John, Meyer, Rumpf, & Hapke, 2009; Lasser et al., 2000). These studies have further estimated that nearly half the cigarettes sold in the United States are consumed by individuals with current mental illness (Grant et al.

; Lasser et al., 2000). As a consequence, persons with mental illness are dying, on average, 25 years prematurely, with the major causes of death being tobacco-related chronic diseases (Colton & Manderscheid; Miller, Paschall, & Svendsen, 2006). We are unaware of any epidemiological study examining Dacomitinib the association of smoking with diagnosable psychiatric disorders by racial or ethnic group, in particular, among Blacks.