Our study suggests that in Detroit, neighborhood social cohesion and physical disorder have opposite associations with cigarette smoking among African Americans. These findings are consistent with prior research. In a recent study,24 the relationship between social cohesion and smoking was examined in Black, treatment-seeking, smokers. They found that, although the total effect of social cohesion on continuous abstinence was nonsignificant, social cohesion was associated with social support, positive affect, negative affect and stress, which, in turn, were each associated with abstinence. In another study of smoking behaviors in urban neighborhoods, higher collective efficacy, which represents a combination of social cohesion and social control, was associated with more smoking in neighborhoods where smoking norms were permissive; in contrast, higher collective efficacy was associated with less smoking in neighborhoods where norms were strongly antismoking.47 Taken together, these results suggest that social cohesion may facilitate decreased smoking through psychosocial mechanisms that can result from living in a community with strong interpersonal connections and antismoking values; however, this effect is likely contingent upon social norms within the neighborhood.52 Although previous studies have examined several
