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Letterman Mocks ACSH Over Smokeless Tobacco?
By Jeff Stier, Esq.
It's as if he read our blog -- and then went on to mock it. Pointing out that last Thursday was the Great American Smokeout, Letterman suggested that if smokers just switched to "chaw," instead of lung cancer, they'd get cancer of the mouth -- what a great deal! And the audience howled.
Of course, this is the same crowd that laughed moments later while Michael "Kramer" Richards was apologizing for his recent racist tirade. Jerry Seinfeld reprimanded them, asking them to stop laughing, and they didn't.
It is a shame nobody from ACSH was there to tell them not to laugh at the "chaw" joke, though. First of all, if Letterman had read our report Helping Smokers Quit: A Role for Smokeless Tobacco?, he'd know that we were referring to smokeless tobacco, or snus, which is placed in the mouth -- not chewed, so it's not chaw. (It also shouldn't be called "spit tobacco" because you don't spit.)
Opponents of efforts to help smokers quit by allowing them to get their nicotine in a less harmful way love making smokeless tobacco sound trashy by calling it chaw and disgusting by calling it spit. Of course, if you, like Letterman, don't have a chance to read our full peer reviewed report, or even the executive summary, you should simply know that using smokeless tobacco instead of smoking cigarettes actually reduces one's risk cancer of the mouth and gums, while eliminating the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and so many other risks that come with the burning and inhaling of tobacco.
Over 400,000 smokers die from smoking-related diseases in this country each year. Mocking this potentially life-saving approach is about as tasteless as guffawing at Kramer's mea culpa.
Jeff Stier is an associate director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
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