One in four Korean men in California smokes cigarettes, a rate 46 percent higher than for California men overall, UC Davis research shows. Other findings: Korean and Chinese women smoke more the longer they live in the United States, and Korean and Chinese children are more likely than California kids overall to breathe secondhand smoke at home.

"Our anti-tobacco efforts need to continue as California's new immigrants are targeted by the tobacco industry with the image that tobacco use is the essence of the 'Western' lifestyle,'' said Moon S. Chen, Jr., associate director for cancer disparities and research at UC Davis Cancer Center and principal investigator of the new tobacco research. "California needs to continue to show that living healthy and tobacco-free is the real Western lifestyle."

Chen reported the research, the first to survey tobacco use specifically in California's Korean and Chinese communities, at a September 2005 California Department of Health Services press briefing in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/newsroom