Chewing tobacco, snuff replace smokes
“I didn’t want lung cancer,” the 18-year-old senior said while skateboarding outside Alliance High School.
He knows chewing tobacco has its own health risks — mouth and throat cancers and “holes through your lips.” He also knows he’s addicted, but he’d rather chew than smoke, he said.
“In a way it’s because other people around you don’t get secondhand smoke and it doesn’t make you lose your breath as easy,” White said.
White’s story is not unique — to himself or to his school. While cigarettes are the most popular tobacco product, an estimated 11 percent of high school boys use chewing tobacco or moist snuff, sometimes referred to as dip, according to federal studies.
Smokeless tobacco use for adult men drops to 6 percent. It is rare among women and teenage girls.
But as laws further restrict smoking in Ohio and across the country, tobacco companies are targeting smokers in hopes that they will turn to the cigarette’s smokeless cousins. It’s a move that has anti-tobacco groups concerned.
