You don't smoke it. You don't swallow it. All you do is
slosh it around your mouth and spit out the brown juices every few
seconds. OK, so it actually
is
pretty disgusting. But so what? After all, it's called
smokeless
or
chewing
tobacco. That means you chew and spit it, not smoke it, so it
can't be as bad as inhaling tobacco smoke into your lungs,
right?
Wrong . . . unfortunately,
smokeless
doesn't mean
harmless
. The fact is, chewing tobacco is every bit as dangerous as smoking
it.
What Is Smokeless Tobacco?
Smokeless tobacco, also called spit tobacco, chewing tobacco,
chew, chaw, dip, plug, and probably a few other things, comes in
two forms:
snuff
and
chewing tobacco
.
Snuff
is a fine-grain tobacco that often comes in teabag-like pouches
that users "pinch" or "dip" between their lower
lip and gum.
Chewing tobacco
comes in shredded, twisted, or "bricked" tobacco leaves
that users put between their cheek and gum. Whether it's snuff
or chewing tobacco, you're supposed to let it sit in your mouth
and suck on the tobacco juices, spitting often to get rid of the
saliva that builds up. This sucking and chewing allows nicotine,
which is a drug you can become addicted to, to be absorbed into the
bloodstream through the tissues in your mouth. You don't even
need to swallow.
Where Does It Come From?
Smokeless tobacco has been around for a long time. Native people
of North and South America chewed tobacco, and snorting and chewing
snuff was popular in Europe and Scandinavia (the word
"snuff" comes from the Scandinavian word
"snus").
In the United States, chewing tobacco has long been associated
with baseball. Players chewed it to keep their mouths moist, spit
it into their gloves to soften them up, and used it to make a
"spitball," a special pitch that involved the pitcher
dabbing the ball with saliva to cause it to spin off the fingers
easily and break sharply. (Spitballs were banned from the sport in
1920.) By the 1950s, chewing tobacco had fallen out of favor in
most of America, so by that time not too many baseball players were
spitting big brown gobs all over the infield. Instead of chewing
their tobacco, most people were smoking it.
But, in the 1970s, people became more aware of the dangers of
smoking. Thinking it was a safe alternative to lighting up,
baseball players started chewing on their tobacco again. Some
players even developed the habit of mixing their chewing tobacco
with bubble gum and chewing the whole thing. Gross, huh?
These days, you don't find the majority of professional
ballplayers with wads of chaw in their cheeks. But lots of guys and
girls, athletes or not, still find time for chewing and
spitting.
Who Chews?
As many as 20% of high school boys and 2% of high school girls
use smokeless tobacco, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC). Of the 12 to 14 million American users, one
third are under age 21, and more than half of those developed the
habit before they were 13. Peer pressure is just one of the reasons
for starting the habit. Serious users often graduate from brands
that deliver less nicotine to stronger ones. With each use, you
need a little more of the drug to get the same feeling.
So What's the Danger?
Just like smoking cigarettes, chewing smokeless tobacco can
eventually rip apart your body and kill you. It's that simple,
really. There's no such thing as a "safe" tobacco
product.
Take Bill Tuttle, for example. An outfielder for the Detroit
Tigers, the Kansas City Athletics (before they moved to Oakland),
and the Minnesota Twins, Tuttle chewed tobacco for most of his
career. In fact, a lot of Tuttle's baseball cards over the
years pictured him with a cheek bulging with chewing tobacco.
Thirty-eight years after the end of his baseball career, Tuttle had
a more ominous bulge in his cheek - a huge tumor that was so big
that it came through his cheek and extended through his skin.
Doctors removed the tumor, along with much of Tuttle's face.
Chewing tobacco as a young man had cost him his jawbone, his right
cheekbone, a lot of his teeth and gum line, and his taste buds.
Cancer caused by his chewing habit finally claimed him in 1998, but
Tuttle spent the rest of his life trying to steer young people, as
well as grown athletes, away from smokeless tobacco.
Other baseball players have met a similar fate. Even one of the
greatest of all time, Babe Ruth, was fond of dipping and chewing
tobacco. He died at age 52 of an
oropharyngeal
tumor, which is a cancerous tumor in the back part of the
throat.
But, of course, it isn't just baseball players who learn to
regret their choice to start chewing tobacco. According to the CDC,
each year about 30,000 Americans learn they have mouth and throat
cancers, and nearly 8,000 die of these diseases. Sadly, only about
half of people with diagnosed mouth or throat cancer survive more
than 5 years.
What Can Chewing Tobacco Do to Me?
The more immediate effects can disrupt your social life: bad
breath and yellowish-brown stains on your teeth. You'll also
get mouth sores (about 70% of spit tobacco users have them). But,
it gets a lot more serious than that. Consequences of chewing and
spitting tobacco include:
- cracking and bleeding lips and gums
- receding gums, which can eventually make your
teeth
fall out
- increased heart rate,
high blood pressure
, and irregular heartbeats, all leading to a greater risk of
heart attacks and brain damage (from a stroke)
- cancer
Oral cancer means cancer of the mouth and can happen in the
lips, the tongue, the floor of the mouth, the roof of the mouth,
the cheeks, or gums. It's been medically proven that long-time
use of chewing tobacco can lead to cancer. But cancer from chewing
tobacco doesn't just occur in the mouth. Some of the
cancer-causing agents in the tobacco can get into the lining of
your stomach, your esophagus, and into your bladder.
Quitting the Dipping
If you're a dipper, put some long thought into breaking the
habit and quitting now. When you decide to quit, don't do it
alone. Tell friends or family and enlist their support. Strategies
for breaking the habit include:
- using a nicotine gum or a patch (ask your doctor about these
options first)
- planning ahead and using substitutes such as tobacco-free,
mint-leaf snuff; sugarless gum; hard candy; beef jerky; sunflower
seeds; shredded coconut; raisins; or dried fruit
- getting involved in healthier activities: lifting weights,
shooting baskets, going for a swim, etc.
It's tough to quit, but realize that backsliding is common,
so don't give up. Your chances of success increase with each
try!
Reviewed by:
Steven Dowshen, MD
Date reviewed: July 2008
Note: All information is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice,
diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor.
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