Health educators announced the campaign Wednesday in Orange County, home to the nation's largest population of Vietnamese Americans. It will be funded by state tobacco tax revenue. The campaign, spearheaded by a UC San Francisco tobacco research group, uses Vietnamese-language television and print ads featuring popular entertainers to counter broad acceptance of smoking, especially for men, in the immigrant community. In Vietnam, nearly three-quarters of men are smokers, experts say. With the help and support of these trendsetters, we hope to get the Vietnamese community to think about how tobacco negatively affects them.
Entertainers have wide exposure in the community.
They establish and reinforce social norms. Vietnamese smokers there, on average, spend more for cigarettes than education or health care. Immigrants who come to the United States bring those ideas with them, so combating those cultural norms about smoking will be a long battle, she predicts. Anti-smoking advocates say that Asian culture and relentless advertising by tobacco companies contribute to the problem. According to the Asian and Pacific Islander Tobacco Education Network, a San Francisco-based group, a 1992 study found that Asian neighborhoods had 17 times as many cigarette billboards as white neighborhoods.