The aims of this study were to evaluate whether menthol smoking impacts nicotine dependence, and whether this impact varies across diverse racial/ethnic groups of daily smokers. The study used two subsamples of U.S. daily smokers who responded to the 2010-11 Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey. The larger subsample consisted of 18,849 Non-Hispanic (NH) White, NH Black and Hispanic smokers. The smaller subsample consisted of 1,112 NH American Indian/Alaska Native, NH Asian, NH Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and NH Multiracial smokers. Within each group of menthol and non-menthol smokers, NH Blacks and Hispanics had lower odds of being a heavy smoker than NH Whites, both odds ratios (ORs) < 0.400. Also, for menthol smokers, the odds of waking up at night to smoke were significantly higher for NH Blacks (OR=1.853) but lower for Hispanics (OR=0.028) than for NH Whites. For non-menthol smokers, the odds of waking up at night to smoke were lower for Hispanics than for NH Whites (OR=0.018), the odds were not significantly different for HN Blacks and NH Whites. There was no menthol smoking effect detected for smoking within 30 minutes of waking up for larger racial/ethnic groups and any nicotine dependence measure for smaller racial/ethnic groups after controlling for the other factors. For larger racial/ethnic groups, menthol smoking, overall, is negatively associated with heavy smoking, positively associated with waking up at night to smoke, and the degree of the effect of menthol smoking differs for NH White, NH Black and Hispanic daily smokers