• 4/11/2004
  • Columbus, Ohio
  • 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 30,000 people in the United States each year. Throat cancers which have the same risk factors add another 12,000 to that number.

Information from: The Columbus Dispatch