Tobacco.org

• Taking Aim at the Professional Rodeo Circuit's Drug of Choice 

At a time when cigarette use has fallen and tobacco's ties have been severed with most major sports - including, this year, the former Winston Cup of Nascar - rodeo is one of tobacco's last entertainment refuges. And smokeless tobacco, which delivers nicotine when placed between a user's lip and gum, is the only growing segment of the industry, gaining new users in rural America. Rodeo, watched by about 23 million people in North America last year, is the rare sport where many, if not most, athletes are regular users of tobacco, which is as routine as rawhide.

"I'll chew till my lip falls off," said Matt Burch, a 27-year-old Wyoming cowboy who owns a rodeo company and took up tobacco as a young boy. "It's part of the code of the West - let a guy do what he damn well wants to do."

Ms. Smith and her 9-year-year-old son, Will Cooper, are suing the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, which makes Copenhagen and Skoal, the leading brands, each accounting for more than $1 billion in sales annually in the United States. The company is owned by UST Inc. of Greenwich, Conn. The suit was filed in April in federal court in southern Idaho, where Mr. Cooper lived.

Copenhagen sponsored Mr. Cooper and gave him free tobacco for much of his professional life. . . .

When his rodeo days were over in the mid-1990's and he was broke, Mr. Cooper sometimes bought tobacco instead of diapers, Ms. Smith said. She is seeking an unspecified amount of money from the tobacco company, but says she does not expect to win any. What she wants is to see chew driven out of rodeo.

In the suit, the family says that Copenhagen, with its high nicotine content, "is far more addictive than almost any other brand" and "has a high concentration of those components of spit tobacco that carry the greatest risk of causing cancer."

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The Kent Cooper case is going to blow the doors open on the relationship between this drug and this sport.
Cowboy Ted Hallisey, who has been setting up booths at rodeo grounds where he warns children of the dangers of smokeless tobacco.

We all need the money. We're not hypocritical. We'd take beer money if we could get it.
John Smith, commissioner of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, on smokeless tobacco sponsorship.

Our product is a legal product for adults only, and it's part of the Western way of life.
Jon Schwartz, a spokesman for UST.