Baseball and tobacco

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Maybe steroids aren’t the biggest problem?

Steroids are a big issue now but even bigger should be chewing tobacco.

With all of the hype on the use of steroids in the past month among the baseball community, I think that baseball should also look at another serious affect to its players, chewing tobacco.

Chewing tobacco and smoking tobacco has been affiliated with baseball since the 1840s mainly in the amateur leagues. A custom to the winning team would celebrate by lighting up a cigar after the game. But as more immigrants joined baseball through the 1860s and 1870s they brought their culture of rolling their own cigarettes and or chewing tobacco.

As baseball grew in popularity so did the tobacco. The tobacco industry used baseball imagery to advertise cigarettes to young men – ads featuring baseball greats like DiMaggio and Ted Williams. The billboard ads spread through the major and minor league ballparks into the early 1990s.

Not only does chewing tobacco increase your chances of getting Oral cancer but it can also lead to other types of cancer within your body with many deadly chemicals that are in chew.

Oral cancer includes cancers of the lip, tongue, cheek, throat, gums, roof and floor of mouth, and voice box (larynx). Surgery to treat oral cancer is often extensive and can disfigure your face and may involve removing parts of the face, tongue, cheek or lip. Oral cancer, like lung cancer, is associated with low survival rates. On average, half of al...

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