Maybe steroids aren’t the biggest problem? Steroids are a big issue now but even bigger should be chewing tobacco. By: Aaron Cole English 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 1840 s 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 1860 s and 1870 s 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 1990 s. 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).
The Term Paper on Tobacco Smoking Lung Cancer
Tobacco Smoking For many people smoking is a trend, or a way of attracting attention so people will think better of them, at least that is how the smoker feels. But in many cases in this corrupt day and age the smoker is an addict and is the dependent of the vicious drug nicotine. Nicotine is the most addictive drug in the world, and is abused by ignorant human beings through the use of ...
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 all oral cancer victims are dead within 5 years of diagnosis. The most noticeable type of cancer that you can get from chewing is called Leukoplakia. Leukoplakia is pre-cancerous areas in your mouth that’s a white rough area where you would place the tobacco. Leukoplakia is the common form of oral cancer. After a period of time that white rough part of your mouth will advent ally turn into oral cancer.
The other types of cancer that are possible to get are pharynx, larynx and esophagus cancers. These types of cancers will develop if the chewer decides to swallow the chew spit. Some danger signs of these types of cancer are: a prolonged sore throat, difficulty in chewing, and a feeling of something in the throat. Treating these types of cancer is a lot harder to cure and the user doesn’t really know until it’s too late! The types of chemicals that are found in chewing tobacco besides Nicotine are Polonium 210 (nuclear waste), N-Nitrosamine’s (cancer-causing), Formaldehyde (embalming fluid) and Cadmium (used in car batteries).
These chemicals in chew make you get the high feeling, and they also make it extremely hard to quit chewing. The baseball community has taken some action against tobacco before, but it only put restrictions against chewing tobacco for the minor league teams.
The first major contribution from the baseball community came in 1994. Baseball ban chew from the minor leagues from the single A leagues to the triple A leagues. With this ban in place the use of chewing tobacco in the minor leagues has gone down to 29 percent from previously being at 48 percent. The college baseball percentage of who chew is at 52 percent. The reason why it’s so high in college baseball is that NCAA has no power over the summer baseball leagues in which these Division 1 through Division 3 athletes play. An example of one of these summer leagues is called the Northwood’s league.
It so happens that the town where I am from has one of these teams. The teams are filled with a majority of Division 1 baseball players. The main point is that there’s not a band against chewing tobacco for these players not to chew and so they can do so if they choose. With young kids looking up to their baseball stars, I think it’s the worst influence for young children because of the “want” to be just like their favorite baseball player.
The Term Paper on Major League Players Baseball Steroids
Drugs, Cheating, and the Purity of America's Pastime Most children who have grown up in an American household have at one point in their lives looked up to sports figures as heroes. Whether it was your grandfather telling his stories of watching Babe Ruth become a legend, your father's stories of Mickey Mantle and the legendary Yankee teams of the 1950's and 1960's, or your own memory of Mark ...
The amount of major league baseball players who chewed in 1994 were 39 percent. This is almost 10 percent more then the minor league players. Of the 39 percent of the players who chew, 46 percent have a precancerous lip or gum disease. The main excuse players that have about chew are “they were never told what the effects that can come from chewing tobacco.” Although since chew has been banned in the minors there is a good sign that since then that the amount of chewers has gone down to 35 percent. There are a lot of die hard baseball fans who think taking away chew from the game will take away the history of the game itself.
Since tobacco products have been around before the game of baseball and during the era of the game, I think most players wouldn’t like to chew once they find out the long-term effects that chew gives to people. With chewing tobacco being a part of baseball ever since the game has begun I think it’s time to turn to a safe alternative other then chew tobacco. I hope that someday that baseball will be chew free and then every player knows the corrective information about the consequences that come along with chew. The best way to beat chewing tobacco is to never start!
