Author: Hannah Braunagel
Native Americans, like other minorities, are targeted by tobacco
companies to sell and be sold cigarettes. Although all American minorities are
targeted by this type of company, Native Americans smokers are at an incredibly
higher rate than any other minority group. One of the number one companies that
use Native Americans to sell their cigarettes is the relatively new company
“American Spirits.” This company uses the emblem of a Native American person
smoking a tobacco pipe on their packaging to sell their “all natural”
cigarettes. This cigarette type is extremely well liked by younger generations,
not only white college aged students, but the younger generations of college
aged minorities too. Native Americans are also sold other types of cigarettes,
including the all popular Pall Mall and Marlboro cigarettes. There is a
distinguishable raise in the rate of smoking cigarettes in Native American
young and elders. 39 percent of the Native American population are currently or
have been smoking cigarettes, compared to whites, who use cigarettes at a 16.6
percent rate. This was found by the Public News Service as the highest rate of
cigarette usage in any minority or majority group. The younger generation of
Native Americans has the highest rate of people picking up smoking cigarettes
than any other minority or majority group. This is due to marketing strategies
of cigarette companies, who target non hispanic whites, especially Native
Americans, to use their brand of cigarettes. Cigarette smoking is at a high rate
amongst mothers who smoke during the last three moths of pregnancy, 26 percent
of last three month pregnant women are smoking compared to 14 percent of whites
in the same stage in pregnancy. Tobacco has always been a large part of Native
American culture, which makes this marketing strategy a no-brainer to the
tobacco companies, but the tobacco abuse has not been a part of the Native
American communities until much more recently. The CDC describes tobacco abuse
as, “smoking one cigarette after another,” in traditional tobacco use, a pipe
was used and shared amongst a large group of people. Nowadays, the Native
American people are found to smoke one cigarette after another, the epitome of
tobacco abuse. There are many health effects to tobacco abuse and most of these
effects are seen by the causation of early death in Native American
communities. Number one being cardiovascular disease, which is the leading
cause of early Native American death. Lung cancer is also a large cause of
early Native American death, which is not only caused by cigarettes, but by air
pollution as well, which is another issue that Native American communities are
now faced with due to white intervention in Native American living sites.
Indiana only has one percent Native American residents, as calculated by the US
census bureau, of this one percent, almost forty percent of these Native
Americans are smoking cigarettes. Quoting cigarettes is not very popular in
Native Americans, which seeks a whole other issue with teens and younger adults
who are picking up smoking. Only 55 percent of Native American smokers wish to
quit smoking compared to 72 percent of African American smokers. Smoking in
total may not be the correct plan of action for Native American culture, due to
tobacco’s use being part of Native American history, but the cessation of
cigarette abuse should be the number one concern of anti-smoking ads directed
toward Native American society.
Author Bio: Hannah Braunagel is a Senior majoring in Anthropology at IUPUI.
Sources:
“American Indians/Alaska Natives and Tobacco Use | CDC.” Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
7 Mar. 2018, www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/american-indians/index.htm.
“New Approach Needed for Tribes' Anti-Smoking Efforts.” Public
News Service, 10 Aug. 2016,
www.publicnewsservice.org/2016-08-10/health-issues/new-approach-needed-for-tribes-anti-smoking-efforts/a53457-1.
Comments
Post a Comment