Aug. 27--CLEARFIELD -- As the handsome star of his high school baseball team in the small town of Stewardson, Ill., Gruen Von Behrens always had a date come Friday night.
But after four years of chewing up to half a can of Copenhagen per day, he would soon hear children ask their mothers why "that man looks like a monster."
It took more than 40 surgeries to stop the squamous cell carcinoma that ravaged his lower face. Months after recovery, Von Behrens hated even the sight of a mirror. Today the 31-year-old activist travels the country in hopes that everyone sees him as the true, stark face of smokeless tobacco's dangers.
"Take a good look at my face," he told Job Corps students in Clearfield on Tuesday morning. "Take a good, long look. When it comes time for you to light that cigarette or take that chew, I hope you think of me."
Von Behrens' presentation came on day two of his five-day tour through Utah high schools as part of The TRUTH's anti-tobacco "Fight the Ugly" campaign.
Hoping to persuade youth to shun tobacco, Von Behrens spared almost no detail about his fight against cancer, during which doctors removed his left leg's fibula to craft a new lower jaw. His tongue split in half, then retreated into his throat. His pillows became blood-stained.
"When I tried chew I thought, 'Why not? Cancer's not something that happens to me. It's something that happens to old people,'" he told the crowd. "Little did I know it would almost cost me my life."
Von Behrens knew his health was in danger when white-colored growths erupted all over his mouth and tongue. But when his mother asked about his constant drooling and slurred speech he told her they were due to his wisdom teeth.
"Some say tobacco use is no big deal because the only person you hurt is yourself," he said. "When I saw the pain on my mother's face, I knew they were wrong."
Operations left him cut from ear to ear, with almost every major nerve in his face severed at one time or another. Doctors transplanted large portions of skin from his right thigh onto his neck. Although the pain was "out of this world," as he told the crowd, it left his sense of humor intact. "At least they didn't use the skin off my ass, right?"
During a question-and-answer period with Job Corps students, Von Behrens admitted that after all this, he still craves an occasional chew. Tobacco's greatest danger is its addictive quality, he said, and the best safeguard against its deadly allure of "cool" is cultivating a strong sense of self-worth. When asked by Von Behrens, many in the crowd raised their hands to say they either smoked or used smokeless tobacco.
"To see someone who's suffered from it like that is scary," said Benjamin Smith, a 24-year-old smoker from North Carolina in Job Corps' diesel trade program who said he chewed for two years. "I've worked my way down to six cigarettes per day after three packs a day. I'm still working down to quitting."
The facts about tobacco
--Utah's youth smoking rate of 7.4 percent is the nation's lowest. The Utah Department of Health estimate that 4.9 percent of the state's high school students, mostly young men, use smokeless tobacco.
--The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 8 percent of the nation's high school students and 3 percent of middle school students use smokeless tobacco, which contains 28 carcinogens and delivers four times the nicotine of one cigarette.
--Tobacco manufacturers spent $250.79 million promoting and advertising smokeless tobacco in 2005, up from $236.79 million in 2001.
--Tobacco use in the United States is the leading preventable cause of death.
Sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control, Utah Department of Health To see more of The Salt Lake Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sltrib.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Salt Lake Tribune Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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