Last month, New York’s City Council voted to ban smokeless tobacco from ticketed sporting events, and Mayor de Blasio has said he’ll sign it into law. The vote followed the passing of similar legislation in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, with a ban in Chicago set to take effect later this year. The ban applies to any sporting event to which tickets are sold, but it’s expected to hit Major League Baseball teams the hardest, since smokeless tobacco has long been entrenched in big-league dugouts. (It’s been banned by baseball throughout the minor leagues since 1993.) But how many ballplayers actually use smokeless tobacco? Well, a lot.
One recent estimate, from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, places the number of big-leaguers who use smokeless tobacco between 25 and 30 percent. A spokesperson for the organization says that while there aren’t many definitive recent studies, a number of things informed that estimate, including various surveys over the years, as well as informal surveys of individual teams, often by local reporters. (One survey, for instance, of 58 players invited to Red Sox spring training in 2014 found that 21, or about 36 percent, were users.) Read More>
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