The Baltimore Orioles baseball team and the city of Baltimore are working to prohibit tobacco use by Major League Baseball players both on the field and in stadiums.
Despite the fact that tobacco products are already prohibited within the major league stadium Oriole Park at Camden Yards, players are exempt from the law. The Major League Baseball Players Association agreement states that the league is not allowed to impose stadium rules on its players in cases where they do not break the law.
According to WBAL-TV 11, Baltimore Council Bill 23-0418 aims to change that, citing concerns that players’ chewing tobacco use may have an impact on minors. The bill would forbid the sale of any kind of tobacco product in any city stadium.
Councilman Kristerfer Burnett of Baltimore said, “We know that young people are pretty impressionable, so it’s important that the athletes they admire and cheer to win ball games are also setting a good example for them.” “The players who are visiting the city are primarily affected by this. A fine exists that would probably affect players “the council member continued.
In an official statement endorsing the bill, the Baltimore Orioles mentioned that they would enact an unnecessary ban at “the Buck O’Neil Complex at Twin Lakes Park and the Ed Smith Stadium Complex, Baltimore’s Spring Training home in Sarasota, Florida.”
“We’ve decided to back the city’s tobacco product ban at stadiums across Baltimore,” stated Kerry Watson, executive vice president of public affairs for the Orioles. “As a group, we always want to make sure that we are acting in the best interests of our community and club,” he continued.
The Baltimore City NAACP declared that the ordinance would prevent “the toxins in the air from harming our mothers and expecting mothers” and threw its support behind it.
Recent calls for a federal crackdown on the nicotine pouch product Zyn by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer have brought attention to tobacco products.
Renowned figures such as Tucker Carlson and businessman Kyle Forgeard, who runs the wildly successful Nelk brand, have praised the Swedish product greatly.
According to a recent theory published in The New York Times, Nelk might have a covert agreement with tobacco companies to promote the product to young people. After Forgeard and his friends gave Carlson a massive novelty Zyn tin as part of a viral video, criticism was leveled.
