Smokeless, spitless tobacco danger to youth

Teen smoking is a huge issue for LGBT youth. Fully 43.7% of our queer youth are smokers. That is nearly half of the teen population! The tobacco companies have traditionally recruited new smokers using their cigarrette products, which taste aweful and emit disgusting fumes. The tobacco companies are now marketing new tobacco products that will entice even more young people into the smoking fold.

Here comes smokeless tobacco.

Smokeless tobacco products come in all sorts of forms. Snus is a big product. It comes in tea-bag like packets, is spitless, and comes in flavors like spearmint and peppermint. Other products include tablets that look like small breath mints and strips and sticks of finely milled tobacco that are dissolvable.

These products are a menace to young people. A lot of these products are cheap and taste like candy. Bucking adult supervision, teens can use the tobacco products discreetly, without spitting or gushing out cigarette smoke.

While youth smoking has been on the decline, use of smokeless tobacco products has been on the uptick. The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has found an upswing in the percentage of youths who have used smokeless tobacco at least one day in the month before being questioned - from 7.8% in 1999 to 8.9% in 2009.

Previously small time ventures, the smokeless tobacco products are now being touted by major manufacturers like Marlboro and Camel. The danger is that youngsters starting out on smokeless products produced by one manufacturer will graduate to the cigarettes produced by that manufacurer. A potentially life-long and life-threatening addiction is then born.

Smokeless tobacco is a stealth attack on our youth by the tobacco companies. It will be interesting to see what the FDA does. These products should be banned for directly or indirectly enticing and attracting young people. Let's see!

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Keep track of the work Butt Out is doing by going to our website (www.butt-out.org/), friending us on Facebook (butt-outsanfrancisco) or by connecting with us on Twitter (twitter.com/buttoutsf).Butt Out is a project of Breathe California, funded by the San Francisco Tobacco Free Project, which works to get tobacco money out of LGBT community organizations in San Francisco. We also educate the public about the hazards of smoking and about smoking cessation.