Tobacco companies bombard the African-American community with a vast array of advertisements and promote more dangerous brands to blacks than they do to whites. Black magazines such as Jet and Essence receive proportionately more revenues from cigarette advertising than do other consumer magazines. Billboards promoting tobacco products are four to five times more prevalent in black communities than in predominantly white communities. A 1987 study in Public Health Reports showed that 65 percent of cigarette ads in black magazines promote mentholated brands, while only 15 percent of the cigarette ads in magazines targeting white readers were for menthol cigarettes. Sullivan, to his credit, has criticized the tobacco companies, but other societal causes of black mortality have received less of his attention.
Alcohol consumption follows the same pattern as tobacco.
The alcohol companies target the black community for sales and push malt liquor brands of beer which have a higher alcohol content, and blacks suffer from alcohol-related diseases at a higher rate than whites. Violence is another major reason blacks die at a younger age than whites, with homicides responsible for more young black male deaths than all other causes combined. But this too is a social problem and requires social cures. Stringent gun control laws would go a long way to cutting down the murder rate. Secretary Sullivan, unwilling to buck the Bush administration on this issue, refuses to support gun control, saying it does not address the fundamental source of violence.