2002 California Dept of Health - Not your grandfather's tobacco cards....

My office is housed at an educational service center which means there are a lot other people housed there, too. We each have our areas of speciality and sometimes our paths cross more than usual. Such is the case for the pack of cards I am presenting tonight. See, one of the people at the service center is the Department of Health Liaison. Her salary is paid through monies the state received as part of Arkansas' tobacco settlement agreement. She educates children on the hazards of chewing, smoking, etc. She has all kinds of 'gimmicks' that she hands out to the students, and on a trip to work on her computer one time, I saw a pack of cards.

The top card says, "Authentic Collectable - Chewing Tobacco Top 10 Prospects" with the words "Chewing Tobacco Trading Cards" in big white letters on it. I was amazed that she would have packs of cards! I asked her for a pack and she gladly handed one over to me. Each pack contains five trading cards.

What you CAN'T see when you look at the pack is just what is on these trading cards... WARNING: These may not be for the feint of heart, but they ARE educational... I warned ya...

The card under the title card is our first Top Prospect - "Gum Ulcer." This one is Number 07 in the top 10, and as you can see, the card features a very LARGE image of rotting gums. In the upper left corner, there is a baseball-themed diamond that reads "Foreign Lesion" (a little play on words there). The next card is the Number 01 Prospect, "Jaw Cancer." This one is just ugly. It also sports the "Foreign Lesion" emblem. Next up, in the Number 05 spot, we have "Leukoplakia" which features a grand shot of the inside of some poor person's mouth. In the corner of this card, we have a new emblem: "SpitMan Chew" Lovely. The follow is Number 04, another "Leukoplakia" card, featuring the "Spitooey! Chewing Tobacco" emblem. The last card in the pack is "Cancer" - a hand-drawn picture that resembles Beethoven with a serious mouth defect. Yeah, it's all ugly.... The backs get into each prospect's "stats."

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The back of the title card discusses all the great things that can happen from chewing tobacco. The "minor league stuff - stinky breath, rotten looking teeth, gum and tongue damage..." to the "The Big Show... irreversible cancer of the tongue, mouth, jaw, throat, stomach..." are covered with a (pardon the pun) tongue-in-cheek approach. The backs of the other cards feature a red vertical bar with the prospect's 'name' in it, a brief witty but to-the-point remark about the disease, and then stats related to the item shown. There is also copyright info (2002 Calif Dept of Health Services). In the lower right corner, the "emblem" is repeated from the front. The last card (the one with Beethoven) tells you how to check your mouth for signs. "If you're going to chew, it's the least you can do."

I do not have the complete set. Honestly, I'm not even sure that I *WANT* the whole set...