Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 8, 1991 TAG: 9103080287
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Doctors from the American Academy of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, said at a news conference that the use of moist snuff, a flavored tobacco that is placed between the cheek and gum, has risen 50 percent since 1981.
The increased use, said Jerome C. Goldstein, executive vice president of the organization, will lead within a few decades to a sharp rise in the number of cancers of the mouth, gum, tongue and throat.
Mike Kerrigan, president of the Smokeless Tobacco Council, said that the sales of moist snuff have increased 3 to 4 percent annually for the last two to three years. He said whether the product causes oral cancer is "an unresolved controversy."
At the news conference, Dr. Roy B. Sessions, a Georgetown University Medical Center professor, said that oral cancers are directly associated with the use of smokeless tobacco. The apparent increase in the use of snuff by teenagers is "going to create a whole new generation of mouth cancers," he said.
Sessions said the increased use may be a result of the growing disapproval of smoking. People, he said, use snuff as a substitute for cigarettes or pipes.
"The tobacco industry has succeeded in selling this product as a safe alternative to smoking," he said. "This will absolutely will never be a safe alternative. You're trading one cancer for another."
Sessions said he routinely operates on people who have spent years dipping snuff and that many of his patients started using snuff before the age of 16.
For people who use snuff for years, he said, "there is evidence that it does cause oral cancer. . . . We're trying to warn the public that this [snuff] is really bad news."
Goldstein agreed, noting, "we just do not see this cancer in people who don't abuse tobacco."
Sessions called oral cancer "a lousy disease to have" because treatment often requires disfiguring surgery and about 30 percent of its victims die.
Dr. Bobby Brown, the president of baseball's American League, a cardiologist and a former third baseman for the New York Yankees, said that organized baseball is slowly making progress in persuading ball players not to use smokeless tobacco.
There is a plan, he said, to ban the use in some minor leagues, and some big league organizations have banned the free distribution of smokeless tobacco in player locker rooms and clubhouses.
But he admitted that "it's a tough fight" because about 45 percent of the players in the major leagues use it.
Brown said that during one spring training season ballplayers were examined and that "a significant number" of those who used smokeless tobacco had evidence of precancerous lesions.
The finding has had little effect, however, said Brown because "professional athletes feel they're indestructible."
by CNB