New York Moves a Step Closer to Banning Smokeless Tobacco at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field

Source from:  New York Daily News 02/26/2016

Chew on this - baseball players at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field could soon be banned from chomping on smokeless tobacco.

The city Health Department backed legislation Thursday to prohibit the substance - which has a long history of use by baseball players but can cause cancer - from all sports arenas, including the homes of the Yankees and Mets.

"Unfortunately, our young people repeatedly see professional athletes, especially baseball players, using smokeless tobacco, making this practice appear socially acceptable," said senior legal counsel Kevin Schroth.

He said the use of smokeless tobacco - which is linked to cancer and mouth disease - doubled among city youth from 2007 to 2013, with 4.4% of kids now using it.

At a hearing on a slew of anti-smoking legislations, the administration also backed bills to ban the opening of new hookah bars, allowing current ones to stay in business only if they get more than half their sales from hookah, and to bar the sale of hookah tobacco at most stores.

Councilman Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) sponsored the chewing tobacco ban - and hopes to see it in place in time for this year's opening day.

"I couldn't imagine us being OK as a city or society as a whole with a baseball player standing in left field smoking a cigarette while the game was going on, on national television," said Johnson, chair of the Council health committee. "But it seems to be, just because of culturally what has existed for a long time, it's OK for professional athletes to stand in left field or in the dugout and chew wads of smokeless tobacco."

The Yankees and the Mets have said they support the ban, according to city officials.

Similar bans have already gone through at Boston's Fenway Park and stadiums in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Major League Baseball has tried to rid the game of the practice - which is already banned in the minor leagues - but hasn't reached a deal with the players' union.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids is pushing cities with teams around the country to bar the product.

"Ball players aren't just indulging in a harmless habit when they use smokeless tobacco - they're damaging their health with an addictive produce that causes cancer and other serious diseases," said Kevin O'Flaherty, the group's northeast director. "And they're endangering the well-being of millions of kids who look up to them."

Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn died of cancer of the salivary glands, while former star pitcher Curt Schilling battled oral cancer.

The de Blasio administration also embraced the move to rein in hookah bars, adding the non-tobacco shisha used in the water pipes to the city's smoking ban. Other pieces of legislation would restrict the retail sale of shisha to tobacco stores only, and raise the minimum age to buy it or patronize a hookah bar to 21.

"Indoor smoking continues to plague our city and threaten the health of so many New Yorkers," said Councilman Vincent Gentile (D-Brooklyn). "Non-tobacco shisha is at least as dangerous as cigarettes."

But business owners bashed regulations. "It's become law after law after law, and we're the victims," said Mohamed Bashir, who owns two Manhattan hookah bars. "We want to work with the law, with the Health department, but we don't want to shut down." Enditem