Would you let your young child smoke a cigarette? Probably not. But experts say if you smoke, you’re putting your kid in just as much danger.

Doctors and anti-smoking activists are encouraging people to join them Tuesday night for a Smoke-free Air Town Hall Meeting at Gethsemane Church of God on South Walnut Street in South Bend.

The meeting hopes to address two issues. The first is that tobacco companies specifically target minorities.

"The tobacco industry spends over a million dollars a day in marketing tobacco products in Indiana, and they market primarily to African Americans and Hispanics," says Jill Sabo, Tobacco Free St. Joseph County. "Seventy-five percent of African Americans smoke menthol. And when you smoke menthol, it opens up all of the parts of the lung, and so a lot of the toxins get stored and trapped."

Sabo says while minorities smoke less than white people and usually start later in life, they are more likely to get sick from smoking cigarettes. That includes their kids and grandkids from second hand smoke.

"If they're a smoker, they don't think, 'Oh my God. I could have caused my child to have asthma.’ Or, ‘I could have caused my child to have an asthma attack or the asthma to flare up,'" explains Elisha Smith, Minority Health Coalition. "It all depends on income level, education level. So if you think about it, most minorities are not well educated as everyone else is, or they have a lower income, or most of all, it's mostly stress. It's also how the tobacco company makes everything look to minorities."

Before they were banned in magazines this year, Smith says magazines popular with black readers used to be filled with cigarette ads. She shows an example in the July 2009 issue of Essence. Smith also says neighborhoods where minorities live are filled with signs and ads for cigarettes and tobacco products.

The second main issue addressed at the meeting is that smoking is expensive. Statistics show in Indiana, $2B is spent on health care related to smoking illnesses. They also show $2.6B is lost in productivity, meaning the time smokers need off from work for being sick or for taking breaks to light up.

On Wednesday, the Indiana Health and Finance Commission will hear from experts about how much smoking is costing the state as they consider a state-wide ban. The idea has been proposed in the legislature many times before, but hasn’t gotten very far.

Indiana has a quit hotline that helps many people kick the habit, 1-800-QUIT-NOW.