Tobacco Product “Snus” Targets Youth, Easy To Hide And Use At School
Snus – Swedish for tobacco, rhymes with “noose” – is a tiny, tea bag-like pouch of steam-pasteurized, smokeless tobacco to tuck between the cheek and gum. Aromatic to the user and undetectable to anyone else, it promises a hit of nicotine without the messy spitting associated with chewing tobacco. Just swallow the juice.
“I think Id rather throw up in my mouth,” says Flint, an 18-year-old West Virginia University student, emerging from a convenience store with a pack of Winstons and a coupon for free Camel Snus. “Id rather not swallow anything like that.”
Reynolds America Inc., the nations No. 2 tobacco company, can also expect resistance from the public health community. Experts wonder whether snus will help wean people off cigarettes and snuff, or just foster a second addiction. While snus has been around, it hasnt been prominent in this country.
“I think were all holding our breath in terms of whats going to be coming down the pike,” says Dorothy Hatsukami, director of the Tobacco Use Research Center at the University of Minnesota. “Theres not much known about these products – whats in these products, how theyre going to be used, whos going to be using them and what the effects of that use will be. … Will it create more harm or less harm?”
Reynolds is confident its new product will find a following. It launched Camel Snus in Austin, Texas, and Portland, Ore., in 2006, and has since expanded to test markets nationwide, with customers in nearly every state. Early next year, its taking snus national with a marketing blitz that spokesman David Howard says will include direct mail, print and Web advertising, and point-of-sale promotions.
Popular for decades in Sweden, where it was invented, snus has been banned in every other European Union nation since 2004 over concerns about carcinogens.
But smokeless tobacco is legal in the U.S., where there are two schools of thought: Some researchers suggest the lower risk of lung cancer makes snus an attractive alternative to smoking, while others fear an increase in problems including mouth lesions or pancreatic cancer.
The American Cancer Society supports any tool that helps smokers quit. “But we dont have any good scientific evidence that snus is one of those tools,” said Tom Glynn, director of cancer science and trends.
“If all smokers switched to snus tomorrow, in a few years wed certainly see less heart disease, less lung disease and fewer cancers,” he said. “But theres no evidence that smokers can switch and stay switched.”
Prevention officials already have their work cut out for them in West Virginia, which has the third-highest adult smoking rate in the U.S. at nearly 27 percent and the highest rate of “spit” or chewing tobacco use at 16 percent.
“The industry is brilliant, and whatever they want to outspend us by – $1 million, $10 million, $100 million – they can do it,” said Bruce Adkins of the state Division of Tobacco Prevention.
U.S. tobacco companies developed snus in response to both declining cigarette sales and consumer demand. With more public bans on puffing, they say smokers need socially acceptable alternatives.
Danny Wolfe, a 38-year-old computer draftsman, gave up regular spit tobacco and has been using Copenhagen tobacco pouches for several years. He spits out the juice; it gives him heartburn.
“Its the same product, just packaged differently. It doesnt get in your teeth. It doesnt have the mess,” says Wolfe, who was sick of smoking outside his Morgantown office. “Youre not quitting anything. Youre replacing.”
Snus is also popular with hunters, who try to avoid scent detection by their prey, and with coal miners, who work in underground mines where the smallest spark can trigger an explosion.
“I find that more rednecks use it,” Wolfe says. “I wont lie to you about that.”
Source: ctnhr