Polytobacco use and multiple-product smoking among a random community sample of African-American adults

Little is known about polytobacco use among African-American adults. This study is the first to explore this among a random, statewide, community sample of African-American adults.

Community-based sampling obtained a random, household-probability sample of African-American adults from California, surveyed door to door in randomly selected census tracts statewide.

Participants were a statewide, random-household sample of N=2118 African-American adults from California who completed a survey on past 30-day smoking of cigarettes, blunts, bidis, kreteks, cigarillos, marijuana and cigars.

Almost half (49.3%) of the African-American cigarette-smokers and 14.9% of the cigarette non-smokers had smoked at least one non-cigarette product in the past 30 days. Smokers had a substantial prevalence of smoking cigarillos (28.7%) and blunts (27.7%). Logistic regressions revealed that the odds of smoking most of the non-cigarette products were higher for cigarette smokers and men, inversely related to age, and unrelated to socioeconomic status. However, smoking of blunts, bidis and kreteks was not predicted by cigarette smoking.

Smoking of cigarillos (eg, Phillies, Black & Mild) and blunts may be prevalent among African-American cigarette-smokers and non-smokers alike, but such products are not examined in most population-level smoking research. Smoking of these products should be included in surveillance studies, in cancer prevention programmes and in healthcare provider-assessment of smoking, and addressed in smoking cessation programmes as well.