By Mary Otto
The ties between smokeless tobacco and baseball run deep. The immortal Babe Ruth claimed Pinch Hit was his chew of choice (as this short film from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reminds us). Now, World Series-winning pitcher Curt Schilling, who revealed in June that his cancer was in remission but didn’t say what kind of cancer it was, has announced that it is oral cancer. He blames the cancer on his 30 years of chewing tobacco.
The June death of Hall-of-Famer Tony Gwynn served as a reminder of the dangers posed by the habit. Gwynn said he believed the salivary gland cancer that killed him was caused by his longtime use of chewing tobacco.
National, state and local health organizations used the story of Gwynn’s passing to talk about the dangers of smokeless tobacco and likely will use Schilling’s news to raise awareness. Is there an angle in this that you could explore in your own state or community?
The nonprofit National Spit Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP) is using a slogan contest to educate Little League Baseball players across the country about the risks. The author of the winning slogan receives an all-expense paid trip to the World Series.
Meanwhile, in a joint letter to Major League Baseball (MLB) officials, the American Dental Association, with organizations including the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society have called for “a complete prohibition on tobacco use at ballparks and on camera.”
“Use of smokeless tobacco endangers the health of Major League ballplayers. It also sets a terrible example for the millions of young people that watch baseball at the ballpark or on TV and often see players and managers using tobacco,” the groups wrote in their letter.
Curt Schilling (Photo: Jeff Archer via Flickr)
A point of negotiation for MLB, players
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig and players’ association executive director Tony Clark have announced they are working to eliminate smokeless tobacco from Major League Baseball. However, the men are apparently of two minds on how to move forward. “It remains to be seen if they can find the common ground necessary to make that goal a reality” observed Jerry Crasnick in a piece for ESPN.
Selig said he expects the subject of smokeless tobacco to become part of negotiations toward a new labor agreement over the next two years while Clark hopes that smokeless tobacco use among players can be reduced through education efforts, Crasnick reported. “Clark said the union is open to discussing the issue in labor talks but wants the use of smokeless tobacco to remain a matter of individual choice and does not advocate an outright ban,” Crasnick wrote.
Even in a season marked by the death of a widely-beloved star, efforts to fight smokeless tobacco face formidable challenges. Fewer Americans are smoking cigarettes, but a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that smokeless tobacco use among American workers has risen slightly since 2005. Looking at tobacco use over five years, researchers found that among working adults, cigarette use dropped from about 22 percent in 2005 to 19 percent in 2010. During the same period, however, the use of smokeless tobacco products such as chewing tobacco and snuff rose from 2.7 percent in 2005 to 3 percent in 2010. The use of smokeless tobacco is particularly prevalent in certain occupations including mining and construction work, the researchers found.
“In recent years there have been declines in cigarette smoking, but there’s really other tobacco products making up a large proportion of tobacco use in certain populations,” Brian King, scientific advisor at the CDC told FoxNews.com reporter Amanda Woerner. As Woerner noted in her coverage, CDC statistics show that more than 30,000 people in the U.S are diagnosed with oral cancer every year. More than 8,000 people die of the disease each year. “Smokeless tobacco is a proven cause of oral cancer, including of the lips, throat and lining of the cheeks,” King told Woerner.
Studies that link smokeless tobacco, cancer
At least 28 chemicals in smokeless tobacco have been linked to cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which offers a fact sheet with definitions of various types of smokeless tobacco products and links to research.
The much-cited 2010 paper “New and Traditional Smokeless Tobacco: Comparison of Toxicant and Carcinogen Levels” offers many more useful links. According to the paper:
“Chronic use of smokeless tobacco can result in nicotine addiction (Hatsukami, Lemmonds, & Tomar, 2004; Hatsukami & Severson, 1999; PHS, 1998) and cause precancerous oral lesions, oral and pancreatic cancer, and cardiovascular diseases (Hecht et al, 1986; IARC, 1985; IARC, 2007; PHS, 1986). A number of toxicants and carcinogens present in smokeless tobacco are believed to be responsible for these negative health effects (Brunnemann & Hoffmann, 1992; Hoffmann & Djordjevic, 1997; NCI, 1992). Among 28 known carcinogens in smokeless tobacco (NCI, 1992), tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNA) are considered to be the most important due to the combination of abundance and strong carcinogenicity (Hecht, 1998; Hecht & Hoffmann, 1988).”
Marketing efforts continue
Tobacco companies continue to heavily market traditional smokeless products as well as new ones such as snus (finely ground moist snuff), and candy-flavored dissolvable tobacco. The industry is also fighting back against efforts to restrict the sale of such products. Last year, a federal appeals court threw out a tobacco industry lawsuit that sought to invalidate New York City’s ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products other than cigarettes, as Ken Bradley reported for Thompson Reuters.
Brad Rodu, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville in Kentucky has served as an outspoken defender of smokeless tobacco, promoting it as a safer alternative to cigarettes. In 2011, Rodu helped lead a “Switch and Quit” campaign sponsored by the university and a local cancer center that urged residents of the city of Owensboro to trade their cigarettes for smokeless tobacco and other products. “Americans are largely misinformed about the relative risks,” Rodu told reporter Michael Felderbaum of The Associated Press for a story on the campaign.
Funding for the program included unrestricted grants from the tobacco industry, reported Felderbaum, who also interviewed Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids for his story.
Meyers dismissed the Switch and Quit program as “a giant experiment with the people of Owensboro without rules or guidance designed to protect individuals from experimental medicine.”
IMAGE BY BISAYAN LADY VIA FLICKR.
