Written by Andrew Lynch

I recently read an article on Al Jazeera America that proclaimed that “the end of teen tobacco” is near. With data provided by the anti-tobacco campaign “The Truth,” smoking is down to nearly nine percent of teens (from twenty-two percent in 2000). This is not at all hard to see. However, this article greatly overlooked the other products of Big Tobacco.

Although anti-tobacco campaigns mainly seem to target cigarettes, the market for smokeless tobacco use is also immense and just as prevalent. The statistics for smokeless tobacco use vary greatly, ranging from five to twenty percent of teenagers currently using it. However, the National Institute on Drug Abuse is the most trustable source for data, reporting that nearly 13.4% of high school boys are users of smokeless tobacco. What is especially frightening is that while cigarette use seems to be declining, smokeless tobacco has seen a fifty percent increase in new users over the past decade. So, while many have chosen to quit smoking, there is still an alarming number of people and teenagers who have decided to continue tobacco use.

Along with the staggering statistics of smokeless tobacco use comes with the unequivocal evidence of it’s danger. To start it off, because of the nature and ease of use for smokeless tobacco, users often are delivered nearly two times the amount of nicotine a pack-a-day smoker would receive, making the nicotine addiction that much harder to overcome. Smokeless tobacco also has more carcinogens than the average cigarette, and in doing so it offers a wide range of oral cancers that have a high probability of developing over time. Some oral cancers are bad enough that users have had to have operations that have greatly disfigured their faces through the removal of their jaws or given them great discomfort as they have lost the ability to speak. The tobacco can also causes extreme dental problems, ranging from gum recession to tooth loss. Ultimately, it should be easy to understand that the benefits of using tobacco couldn’t possibly outweigh its costs.

I am writing this article mainly due to the prevalence of smokeless tobacco in every high school boy’s life. Although Oratory is not in any way the home of depraved youth, I am sure we all know people, friends, or family who use these products, and because of this the dangers of smokeless tobacco are especially important, for us as young men, to understand. At this point in our life, we begin to develop habits that will carry on into our future, and acquiring habits that are detrimental to our health can be extremely dangerous and imprudent. The things we see going on around us as we become adults could make us think that maybe it is alright to give in and allow us to be “rebellious” or “dangerous”, but we must be wise about our decisions. Peer pressure is the sole weapon that the tobacco industry still has, and if we wish to save each other from harming ourselves, we must act together and learn to just say no.