A new awareness campaign is targeting teens in rural America in an effort to reduce the use of smokeless tobacco. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is teaming up with minor league baseball teams to spread the message “smokeless doesn’t mean harmless,” in baseball stadiums, on local television stations, on the radio and online in 35 communities across the country.

Aiming to reduce the usage of products like snuff, snus, chew and dip among those most at risk to try them — specifically young, white men — the campaign is targeting a practice heavily associated with rural Americana.

Back pockets with the circle of a chewing tobacco can worn into the denim are a well-known sight in rural communities and so strong is the association between chewing tobacco and baseball that campaigns have been launched to divide the two.

“We use the phrase ‘at risk’ very deliberately, because living in a rural community turns out to be a risk factor for using smokeless tobacco,” said Mitch Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products for the FDA. “The kids that we’re trying to protect see all of these respected role models… using smokeless tobacco. They think it’s a rite of passage, something that’s expected of them.”

Roughly 32 percent of rural males ages 12 to 17, or approximately 629,000 teens, are at-risk for using chewing tobacco, according to a Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study. 

While teen smoking rates have been declining precipitously, according to Zeller, the teen rate of smokeless tobacco usage plateaued around 2010. 

“The stats show that every day almost as many teenage boys under the age of 18 try smokeless tobacco for the first time as light up a cigarette for the fist time,” Zeller said. 

Dr. Christopher Squier, an oral pathology at the University of Iowa, noted that kids still see athletes using chew, and though the risk of lung cancer is much lower, smokeless tobaccos still contain a lot of nicotine. There are cardiovascular effects, changes in the mouth, and changes in the lining of the mouth, which goes on to become cancer, said Squier.

Quitting, Squier also said, becomes harder due to the the high levels of nicotine in smokeless tobacco products.

In an effort to reach young people, the new campaign tries to connect emotionally with the audience using dramatic and sometimes graphic imagery. Zeller said the FDA has learned from research that simply communicating facts isn’t effective and instead aims to “break through” by presenting addiction as something that takes control away from young people just beginning to gain their independence.

“You can’t preach to kids,” he said. 

The campaign also features an once-aspiring professional baseball player who was diagnosed with cancer at 17 years old and became an advocate against smokeless tobacco. He died not long after filming the spot. 

“As with our cigarette campaign, there is a way to break through to these kids with messages that they will resonate with, and over time, we’ll give them the information, ” Zeller said. “You won’t see us lecturing about health consequences.”