Tobacco

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

Forgive me but I have never known many football players from high school to have very serious injuries as a whole. People die of Cancer all the time in this country and tobacco products are one of the biggest reasons for that disease. I guess we better stop playing soccer, because girls get more concussions playing that sport then any other sport. Cheerleading has more serious injuries then just about any other activity across the board. All these activities take place in schools. Only the chess or debate teams have no risk of serious injury. And I am sure if a light falls from the ceiling and hits someone in the head in those activities somewhere. I would not compare outlawing a drug that is known to be linked to a disease to a sport kids might play or not play and most come out fine. I played football and had no serious injuries as a result. I was fortunate not to have any playing 3 sports at some point in varsity, but that is a bad analogy on your part to not understand why things are outlawed.

Statistics would show more injuries per participant for football than for chewing tobacco; I don't think it'd even be close, in fact. And yeah, even more for cheerleading. Sports are linked to injuries like drugs are; if you wanted to compare them for safety stats, and think that is the reason they're outlawed, then you'd wind up wondering!

OK, I Googled, taking the 1st appropriate hits that came up for terms I put in. 2001-6 in the USA...

football (touch & tackle combined): 21.92 injuries per 1,000 participants per year
moist snuff + chewing tobacco: 30.4 excess mouth or throat cancers per 100,000 users/yr.

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