COLUMBUS - Health care professionals hope new education programs will prevent teenagers from getting hooked on smokeless tobacco.
Dentists say they are 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. 17
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