• 4/12/2004
  • Columbus
  • Associated Press

Health care professionals hope new education programs will prevent teenagers from getting hooked on smokeless tobacco.

Dentists say they’re seeing more Ohio kids _ rural and suburban _ using the chewing tobacco and snuff generally associated with farmhands and baseball players. Some doctors predict a dramatic rise in oral cancers in the next several decades unless more is done to teach young people about the risks of smokeless tobacco.

“It’s not (an exaggeration) to say that it represents a little bit of a sleeping-giant health risk at this point in time,” said Dr. David Schuller, director of the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and a specialist in head and neck cancers. In many cases, users start in middle school and think smokeless tobacco poses little risk.

A 2002 Ohio Department of Health study found that almost 12 percent of Ohio high school boys had dipped in the past month. About 1 percent of the girls had. In middle schools, about 5 percent of the boys and almost 2 percent of the girls had. And although 77 percent of teenagers recognize the danger of cigarettes, only 40 percent know chewing tobacco can hurt them, according to a survey by the U.S. surgeon general.

To combat the problem, dentists and schools throughout the state are utilizing a new program called Operation TACTIC, for Teens Against Chewing Tobacco in the Community. It includes print materials and a video in which Tammy Smith and her son Tyler tell the sobering story of their husband and father, Kevin Smith, of Gallipolis. Smith died at 31 after having his tongue removed and enduring a failed attempt to replace it with muscle from his chest and tissue from his legs.

Adult use of smokeless tobacco is twice as high in Appalachia as the rest of the state. The Ohio State University College of Dentistry is working in Hocking,
Morgan, Vinton and Washington counties in southeast Ohio to compare two approaches to quitting. One is a video; the other, one-on-one intervention.
The study is paid for with tobacco-settlement money.

“One of the things that’s remarkable about oral cancer is that it still remains difficult to treat,” said Dr. Henry W. Fields, the study’s lead investigator. “Survival rates haven’t changed much in the past several decades.”

Oral cancer grows in the lips, cheeks, tongue, throat, gums, larynx and esophagus. Those who survive it can be disfigured after surgeons remove cancerous bone and tissue. The first signs are white patches in the mouth, often discovered in the dentist’s office. Slightly more than half of patients with oral cancers live five years, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society. Doctors diagnose oral cancer in more than 18,000 people in the United States each year.

OCF Note: While out of a well-respected source, this article contains many errors or conclusions that are not explained accurately. Doctors will actually diagnose 30,000 new oral cancer patients in the US this year, not 18,000. If their description of oral cancer includes cancers of the throat as they have stated, (which have the same risk factors, but are usually categorized as a different type of cancer than oral), you can increase that number by 12,000 more individuals. When Dr. Henry Fields states that this disease is “difficult to treat”, what he should have said is that is difficult to treat in its later stages which unfortunately are about 66% of the cases. This issue of late discovery and diagnosis yields the horrible 50% death rate associated with the disease. In its early stages it responds well to conventional surgery and radiotherapy, with survival rates for carcinoma in situ, stage one, and stage two cancers between 80 and 90%.