Snus (snuff) use in football

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Interesting/worrying read.

https://theathletic.com/4347316/2023/03 ... ed_article

Some extracts for those who can’t access.

“It’s the live match on television. Aston Villa are taking on Arsenal in front of a global audience of millions. The home team are heading towards a 4-2 defeat and, when the camera pans to Unai Emery, Villa’s manager, your eyes are drawn to the player in the dugout behind him.

These are the moments when Bertrand Traore, one of Villa’s substitutes, can be seen lifting up his top lip before appearing to place something alongside his gum. Aware that the footage has circulated on social media, Traore denies it was snus.”

Today, an investigation by The Athletic reveals:

- One high-profile England international is “fully reliant (on snus)… rarely seen without one under his gum”.

- Another big-name Premier League player weaned himself off snus after a long period of struggling for form.

- Players at a League One club have been selling snus to 13- and 14-year-olds in the academy.
One player at a League Two club had “a bit of cancer cut out of his gum” because of heavy use.

- The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) is to undertake a research study as part of a new campaign, starting this summer, to warn players of the potential risks.”

“What is increasingly clear is that snus has become part of everyday life within modern-day football, used by players from elite clubs such as Manchester United and Manchester City all the way down to non-League and semi-professional levels.

The problem, in the words of Dr James Malone, a senior lecturer in coaching science at Liverpool Hope University, is that it can be “terrible for your body”. It can cause mouth or throat cancer, just for starters, but there are also a number of other side effects.”

Lee Johnson, a manager who has seen its effects close-up, has told The Athletic that from his experiences he estimates 35 to 40 per cent of players are taking snus. If anything, he says, the numbers are probably higher. They just don’t want you to know about it.

But it has become a culture. It’s getting worse and we need to educate these lads because it’s highly addictive. I don’t feel they understand the true threat of it over the long term.”

It is illegal to sell snus in the UK and every European Union country bar Sweden, where it originates, and it has been that way since 1992. But it is legal to consume it. No doping rules are broken by footballers who use it. And so, a culture has developed whereby Johnson talks about snus being part of a “starter pack” for professional footballers, many of whom keep the old-fashioned tins in their wash bags.

“I sound like a nag but I care for them,” says Johnson. “I don’t want them suffering the side effects. It zones you out. It calms you down. This is why some players like it, when they have all the pressures of football. But then you see them taking three or four caffeine tablets, or caffeine chewing gum, to get themselves back ‘up’ before games. It’s crazy, there’s just no equilibrium.”

“We had one player who came over for his medical. I asked him if he was on it. He promised he wasn’t. Then, within four weeks, I caught him with one up his top lip. ‘I’m sorry’, he said. ‘I just got sucked in by the boys’.

Another of my players (at a former club) was so highly addicted that when he came round from having an operation in hospital he was climbing off the walls because he needed it that badly. He was desperate, begging the doctors to be allowed some. In the end, he forced his girlfriend to get it for him.

The doctors were kicking off because they thought it might counter-balance the morphine they had given him. But once you start taking snus, it’s very hard to stop. A lot of players want to get off it, they just can’t.”