Something new to chew on
By Jackie Gill
jgill33@uwo.ca
Rob Running vividly remembers the first time
he saw the effects of chewing tobacco.
He was just 16 years old, working his first summer job at a gas
station, when a customer who came in wearing a medical facemask
noticed him chewing. So the customer took Running aside, and took
off his mask.
"It looked like he got shot in the face. He was missing
his bottom jaw, his tongue. It was pretty gross," said Running.
"He actually lost his tongue and part of his face to cancer
from chewing."
The shock scared him straight — for a month. Then he picked
up a tin and started chewing again.
 |
| Photo courtesy of Rob
Running |
| Rob Running works at his computer. |
Kids like Running, who had his first chew, as it's commonly called,
in Grade 6 and continued until he was in second-year university,
are the focus of a postcard campaign by several Ontario youth
action groups asking the provincial government to ban the sale
of chew entirely.
February's Through With Chew week led to an estimated 7,000 postcards
being sent to local MPPs across the province. And, as of March
17, they started trickling into Queen's Park. Already the province
restricts the sale of chew to over-19s, but that's not enough,
say the health units.
"You want to nip it in the bud and stop it before it's happening.
If it's not available to them (youth), they can't use it,"
said Amy Yateman, youth adviser with One Life Crew, the youth-led
peer group with the London-Middlesex Health Unit. Her crew generated
close to 1,500 of the campaign's postcards.
"The tobacco industry is really pushing chew as an alternative,
a safer alternative," she said. "We're pushing just
as hard back to say, 'It's not. Here's what could happen to you.'
"
Before kicking off the postcard campaign, Corina Artuso, the
youth adviser with Algoma Public Health in Sault Ste. Marie who
co-ordinated the provincewide postcard campaign, says she didn't
know there was even a problem. But when she started asking youth
to identify major health issues, chew came up in five different
communities covered by her health board.
"All of them unanimously identified chewing tobacco as something
important to address. I didn't even know what chewing tobacco
was at that time, so I thought they were kind of nuts," she
said.
"The kids know that this is happening; youth know this is
happening, but grown-ups, not so much."
She's learned a lot since then, even if she's encountered a stunning
lack of statistics on the matter. Most reports are anecdotal,
she says, but the few studies that have been conducted show a
marked rise in chew tobacco use. In her area, 10 per cent of Grades
7 to 12 chew on a regular basis or at least once, and in one Waterloo
school, 32 per cent of the kids have tried it at least once.
"We're starting to learn that it's becoming more of a problem,"
she said. "We're seeing an increase in use among youth, particularly
in male athletes."
That's how Running got started, sucking on a piece of cherry-flavoured
chew when he was 12 during a hockey game with his older cousin
in his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie.
"We all went outside to play hockey," he said. "When
we were younger, and everyone would be outside playing hockey,
everyone would just chew. That's just the way it was.
"I guess you could say it's classic peer pressure from the
older, cooler kids, I guess."
While it was common for kids to chew in elementary school, Running
says he didn't get heavily into chew until he started Grade 9.
At the time, he didn't know much about the risks. He admits he'd
heard about oral cancers, but he had yet to experience the effects
with his own eyes. Even after his gas station encounter at age
16, he couldn't kick the habit for more than a month.
"It was relaxing, I guess. It was a habit as a group of
guys. We'd always chew in the hockey dressing room before and
after (a game). We'd always chew in the weight room," he
said.
It took five more years of chewing for him to finally quit. In
his second year of university at Windsor, he decided enough was
enough. "It was just stupid. It's gross. You don't want to
be talking to people and spitting," he said.
"I just kind of grew out of it when I matured a bit. I've
still got a long way to go, but …"
But his friends are still working through about two or three
tins a day, he says, and with each costing up to $8 a pop, he's
glad to be free of it.
The cost of the tins isn't the only concern that chewers should
be wary about though, warns Yateman. She points out that there
are up to 3,000
chemicals in a single tin of chew, including formaldehyde,
a fluid used to embalm bodies; cadium, an acid found in car batteries;
and arsenic, the active ingredient in rat poison. As many as 28
chemicals in various brands of chew are linked to cancer.
Some kinds of chew tobacco even add abrasives that cut into gums
to get nicotine into the bloodstream more quickly, says Yateman,
adding that "a small pinch might be equal to numerous cigarettes,
so you're getting more, quicker."
And while each tin comes with a warning sticker akin to those
on cigarette packages, the tobacco companies have found a way
to work around negative stigmas, Yateman says. In her hand is
a tin of cherry-flavoured Skoal, a brand used by many youth, and
she points to a small warning label on the side.
 |
| Photo by Jackie Gill |
| Amy Yateman holds up a tin of chewing tobacco
with the top half of the warning label removed. |
"Here it says, 'this product is not a safe alternative to
cigarettes,' but when you rip it open, now it says 'a safe alternative
to cigarettes.' "
US Tobacco, the company that produces the line of Skoal Yateman
displays, was not available for a comment.
While Yateman works to make London kids aware of information
like this, she knows that kids often won't listen to adults on
such matters — Running, for example, continued chewing after
his dad found an empty tin and gave him a lecture. That's why
the health unit's youth action alliance, the One Life Crew, relies
on peer leaders like Victoria Trglavcnik to make sure young people
are getting the message.
"Youth listen to their peers. They know what's cool, what's
not cool, what will work and what won't work," said Yateman.
Trglavcnik, a 17-year-old student at London's Catholic Central
High School, is just one year older than Running was when he unsuccessfully
struggled to kick the habit. But she's never tried chewing tobacco.
Her job is to make sure her friends and peers stay away from it
too.
 |
| Photo by Jackie Gill |
| Victoria Trglavcnik talks to kids about
the hazardous effects of chew with the Middlesex-London Health
Unit's One Life Crew. |
Over the summer, Trglavcnik visited summer camps and community
events to help kids as young as eight understand the risks of
chew tobacco. She's also been to anti-chew events at malls throughout
the year to get the word out any way they can, she says.
"We try not to be boring; we make our presentations interactive.
We have a lot of games that we've developed. We try to make it
shocking, and somewhat short and sweet," she said.
And because it's a newly emerging topic, she's learned a lot
about chew during the past year with the postcard campaign —
she even signed one herself.
"It's really gross," she said.
Running agrees. "I still have some friends who still chew,
and thank God I got off that bandwagon when I did. They're older
now and they're chronically addicted."
