It’s 3:05 pm and I am just returning to my hotel room in Newport News after finishing the final session at the Reducing Tobacco Use 2011 conference put on by the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth. Now, I know you are probably thinking, why a tobacco conference? Is that really still a priority? Aren’t there other things out there that are more important? Don’t most people already know that smoking is bad for them? Can we please retire the smoking Nazi (as one commenter on a website recently put it).
And here is the answer…YES, people are very aware that smoking is bad for them. Why is it still a priority? Because smoking is still killing people, because the number of NEW tobacco users is on the rise, and because the tobacco companies aren’t throwing in the towel...so we can’t either.
You know a lot of places have recently gone smoke free (woo hoo!!!) what you may not have known is that to counter this loss of revenue the tobacco companies have come up with many new “smokeless” options. What is smokeless tobacco? Well its tobacco that you either chew or dissolves in your mouth. It’s made to look very similar to tic-tacs or mints. It comes in sweet flavors and it appeals to women. Yes the number of women who use smokeless tobacco is on the rise, why? Because you don’t have to spit. Men like spitting…women, not so much.
Instead you sit for with a packet of tobacco in your upper lip (less saliva gathers there) until you feel a tingling (one user described it as a BURNING) sensation in your gum for THIRTY minutes. So guess what, the number of people with lung cancer is going down (don’t start cheering yet) and the number of people with cancer of the mouth is growing!
Great news ladies, you don’t have to worry about smoking related wrinkles or yellowing of the fingers. Nope that is a problem of the past. The new tobacco users of today will instead get to look forward to looking like this….
Now ain’t that sexy.
