Two U.S. senators have taken a swing at knocking Major League Baseball’s smokeless tobacco habit out of the ballpark.
“It has been 28 years since the MLB ended tobacco use in its minor leagues, and it is time to extend that policy throughout MLB’s venues and events,” Senators Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrote Tuesday in letters to baseball leaders.
The major leagues’ collective bargaining agreement expires in December. The senators urged Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, and Michael Wiener, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, to include a ban on “the use of all forms of tobacco products” in the new contract.
There are signs MLB could be receptive. MLB’s executive vice president, Robert Manfred, and the union’s chief labor counsel, David Prouty, told Congress last year that they would be willing to talk about it during future contract negotiations. Manfred said that “an outright ban on the use of smokeless tobacco in the Major Leagues is a laudable goal.”
According to the federal government’s National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the use of smokeless tobacco has increased by 36 percent among high school boys since 2003, with more than one out of seven now using the products. “While tobacco companies spend millions on ads tailored to attract young people to use tobacco products, MLB is undoubtedly complicit in attracting many young people to try smokeless tobacco after seeing their baseball heroes chew tobacco,” Lautenberg and Durbin said.
Chewing on “chaw” has been a baseball tradition. But the minor leagues outlawed it in 1993 despite resistance from some players who felt their rights were being violated.
In January, star pitcher Steven Strasburg of the Washington Nationals said he was trying to give up smokeless tobacco. “It’s going to be hard, because it’s something that’s embedded in the game,” he told The Washington Post.
