Smokeless but Still Tobacco

Kevin Dager gets dreamy-eyed when she recalls her life as a closet chewer.

It started when she was dating a cowboy at Casper College, and he offered her a plug. He thought it was funny. She couldn’t get enough.

As the years rolled by, Dager found herself slipping into drugstores where she wouldn’t be recognized to feed her three-can-a-week habit. She married, had kids and went through nursing school -- all with a wad of wet tobacco tucked in her cheek.

“No one ever knew,” the 51-year-old said with a slight smile. “I hid it in my panty drawer, in my purse.”

And she showed a little class as well.

“I was a swallower, not a spitter,” she said. “Spitting is crass.”

This month, in the interests of educating others, Dager outed herself as a former tobacco chewer. She quit years ago but was embarrassed to admit she’d ever used it.

“I felt I was living a lie,” she said.

More people chew tobacco in Wyoming than in any other state except West Virginia, health officials say. Five percent of young women, 21% of high school boys and 17% of adult men use it.

Last week, Wyoming launched “Through With Chew Week,” an effort to make what’s called spit, smokeless, snuff or chewing tobacco less popular. Educators, dentists and cancer patients traveled throughout the state trying to persuade users to spit it out for good.

That’s not an easy task in a state where the cowboy ethos reigns supreme and thumbing one’s nose at outside authority is a cherished tradition.

“Our state is so funny,” Dager said. “We fight seatbelt laws and open-container laws. Whatever they say is good for us, we are determined not to do.”

And that goes for chew.

Despite all the health warnings, teachers say school sinks and toilets are thick with tobacco spit. Students, male and female, sit quietly in class with wads jammed in their mouths. They swallow the juice so as not to give themselves away.

“I think the rates for kids are much higher than 21%,” said Larry Deal, a health teacher at Laramie Junior High School and a former chewer. “I think it’s the whole Western, rugged lifestyle thing. This is a state, after all, that risked millions of dollars in federal highway funds because we wouldn’t paint the white lines on the highway yellow to see better in the snow.”

Dentists are seeing increasingly younger patients with periodontal disease, the beginnings of mouth cancer and tooth discoloration caused by tobacco.

“Most of the [tobacco-using] kids I saw 10 or 15 years ago were cowboys, now they are in college or high school,” said Dr. Larry Foianini, a Laramie dentist. “There are teenagers out there with no jawbones because of cancer.”

Anti-chew activists say companies like U.S. Tobacco, the world’s largest producer of smokeless tobacco, have taken advantage of the Wyoming lifestyle to market their product.

Such companies are the prime sponsors of rodeos across the West, where the back pockets of cowboys’ jeans often bear the tell-tale imprint of a tobacco can.

“I think the tobacco industry has hijacked Wyoming culture,” said Nicki Sue Mueller, coordinator of Through With Chew Week. “Rodeo is great, but that’s the chosen sport of smokeless tobacco. I had a kid say to me: ‘If I am ever going to be pro, I need to chew because they are our sponsors.’ ”

Demetrious Schuler, 18, started chewing tobacco at Cheyenne Frontier Days, which featured one the largest rodeos in the world.

“I was handing out free samples of chew tobacco, so I tried it,” he said. “It was a legal buzz, so I liked it. I’ve been doing it now for eight months.”

U.S. Tobacco produces best-sellers Copenhagen and Skoal, with a combined $2 billion in annual sales.

“The outdoor Western lifestyle blends a little better with our product than other areas,” said Jon Schwartz, a spokesman for the company. “We want to make this the preferred way to experience tobacco. I think smoking laws have made smokeless tobacco more popular.”

Schwartz said the West and Southeast were the best markets for his product.

The amount of nicotine in a single pinch, health officials say, is equal to three or four cigarettes.

“One can of tobacco has the same nicotine as three or four packs of cigarettes,” Mueller said.

As a bit of shock therapy, Mueller invited Gruen Von Behrens to speak Thursday at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

Von Behrens, who travels the country talking about the dangers of smokeless tobacco, began chewing when he was 13.

By 17, he noticed a white spot on his tongue. The spot eventually tunneled through his tongue, split it and caused him to slur his words. Food spilled from his mouth when he ate.

“I thought I kissed the wrong girl,” he said. In fact, he had cancer of the mouth and tongue.

After 33 surgeries, his tongue was cut in half, his chin sawed off and moved to another part of his face, and his jaw is largely gone. His face is ravaged, and he struggles to speak.

“Ask yourselves this?” he told the rapt audience. “How cool does this face look? The tobacco companies won’t show this face in their ads. The next time you take a dip of chew, I hope you see this face and remember this voice.”

That sent some users straight to a free dental screening.

“I keep a picture of Gruen on my wall for inspiration,” said Skylar Brenden, 22, of Rock Springs, Wyo., who has been chewing since he was 18 but wants to give it up.

Dr. Becky Burman, a dentist, checked out his mouth and saw no abnormalities. Brenden was relieved.

“I’m not going to quit now,” he said. “I’m carrying 22 hours of classes, and when I try to quit, the stress comes up again and I want to chew.”

Burman shook her head.

“I used to be a dentist in Wisconsin, and I could count on two hands the number of chewers I met,” she said. “But here it’s everywhere. I can’t tell you how many people told me they started when they were under 10.”

Chase Dodson, 19, spent much of his youth trying to sneak tobacco from his father’s stash. Now he’s worried about cancer.

“I worked on a lot of cattle ranches as a kid,” he said. “I always wanted to use it because it looked cool, and now I wish I could stop, and I can’t.”

In Cheyenne, Dager has become a minor celebrity at the United Medical Center, where she runs a tobacco cessation program. Her friends and fellow nurses are astonished at her clandestine past.

Her husband, Bob, a retired police officer, popped his crew-cut head into her office.

Asked why he had never discovered her secret, he shrugged.

“I don’t pry,” he said.

Then he shifted a wad of chew in his mouth and walked off.