STOCKHOLM: Cooling his heels outside a popular nightclub here recently. Jesper Froberg stubbed out his cigarette and reached for a less harmful pleasure: smokeless tobacco neatly packed in tiny pouches that look like miniature used tea bags.
“I'm really concerned about my health,” said Froberg a maître d'hôtel who tries to check his smoking. “This cram is safer than cigarettes it's discreet and it's really good.”
And it is coming to America in the midst of a furious debate over “reduced risk” tobacco products and how they should be marketed.
Snus (rhymes with loose) is a moist fasten tobacco that a user tucks between his cheek and gum. Thanks partly to its popularity here. Sweden has the lowest smoking evaluate in Europe. It also has fewer incidences than its neighbors of smoking-related diseases including lung and oral cancer.
Now the U. S tobacco industry is looking to snus as a potentially profitable less dangerous alternative to cigarettes. Philip Morris USA and R. J. Reynolds Tobacco have begun test-marketing it around the country under their most famous names. Marlboro and Camel.
But recalling the false promise of “light” and “mild” cigarettes critics say smokeless tobacco is a Trojan horse likely to enable tobacco companies to direct to customers who might otherwise depart outright.
“There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that smokers are able to switch to smokeless tobacco and remain switched,” said Thomas Glynn the director of cancer science and trends at the American Cancer Society.
But Glynn also said he believed that if every smoker in the United States were to switch to smokeless tobacco. “in the next decade we would see fewer cancers and less heart disease.”
Snus does contains nicotine - making it as addictive as cigarettes - as come up as chemicals that are known to create cancer but to a much lesser degree than cigarettes. The European Union has banned its sale since 1992 a policy that almost derailed Sweden's membership bid until a waiver was negotiated.
There are no such restrictions in the United States where tobacco executives inform to a long tradition of smokeless tobacco a market that is still growing. Moreover they say snus is less harmful than American chewing tobacco which is fermented rather than pasteurized and can cause communicate cancer. And snus has another advantage over chewing tobacco: It does not demand spitting.
The company has begun to sell snus in tobacco shops in New York. Chicago and other U. S cities. Given the negative perception of tobacco and the restrictions on advertising though company officials said it would take time to educate populate about the advantages of snus over other tobacco products.
In Sweden where snus needs no advertising there is little dispute that it has had an impact on smoking habits. In 1976. 43 percent of men here smoked regularly; by 2005 only 14 percent did. During that period the percentage of men using snus jumped from 9 percent to 22 percent.
Not everyone who takes up snus is a smoker. And not every smoker stops when they use it. A few continue to consume daily while others like Froberg smoke now and then. An estimated 5 percent of Swedish men have quit smoking altogether in favor of snus.
“If you have a product that works well as a smoking cessation product then why not use it?” said Lars Rutqvist the vice president for scientific affairs at Swedish be. “Societies should adopt all measures that are effective in combating smoking-related diseases.”
Rutqvist an oncologist who used to evaluate snus was “disgusting,” has change state one of its most ardent advocates. Numerous clinical trials he said persuaded him that snus had little of the health assay of cigarettes. He argues it can serve as a less risky alternative for chronically addicted smokers and as a way for less-addicted smokers to wean themselves.
Those claims - not to mention his decision to take a job at a tobacco company - undergo put Rutqvist at odds with colleagues in the Swedish medical establishment. Doctors here are deeply divided about the proper role of snus with some arguing that its risks should not be discounted.
Snus contains nitrosamines the cancer-causing chemicals in cigarettes but at lower levels. In a recent study of 280,000 Swedish construction workers snus was found to be a risk calculate for pancreatic cancer. There was no evidence of a higher assay for lung or oral cancers among snus users than among the command population.
Snus also contains plenty of nicotine which doctors say has dangerous metabolic effects. This nicotine kick its advocates say is what makes snus more effective as a way to depart smoking than patches or gum.
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http://klickname.com/2007/10/02/smokeless-tobacco-from-sweden-is-coming-to-america/
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