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David Dodd

David Dodd is a Reader contributor. See staff page for published articles.

Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco

I don't agree with Gil Ross. I was 9 years old when I smoked my first cigarette. By the time I was in high school I was a pack-per-day smoker. I currently smoke more than that, I am 50 years old. There was one point in my life where I quit, I was around 30 years old. Six months later I had a particularly difficult day, if there would have been a gun handy I might have eaten a bullet. Instead, I started smoking again. Gil Ross has one thing right: The best way to quit an addiction is to substitute something else in its place. What Gil Ross has wrong is that substituting another harmful addiction in its place is not a good substitution. I bought bags of lollypops when I quit. Every time I wanted a cigarette (which was constantly for the first week), I sucked on some candy. However, I point out to everyone that dentists would not recommend this. But it worked. And what Gil Ross is advocating would also work. It simply isn't healthy. And for the record, I agree with Mark Kotsay. I do not need rules and regulations to save me from myself. Also know that there is no guarantee that one will get a cancer or some other disease from smoking or chewing tobacco. It greatly increases your odds, but otherwise it's still a crap shoot. Any honest doctor will tell you this, just as honest doctors have told me this. You quit tobacco mainly because it greatly increases the quality of your life. But banning tobacco is not going to help anyone other than a criminal element that will ensure its availability in spite of such rules and regulations.
— March 14, 2012 7:34 p.m.

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