In the week CBS 60 Minutes discussed the pros and cons about smokeless tobacco. Read about it here or go to http://www.buysnus.com/goingsmokeless.aspx to see the videos.
Think smokeless tobacco, and you probably conjure up something distinctly unappealing: a bulging mouthful of wet, brown goo that is smelly and spitty, brown and drooly.
Not anymore: now there’s snus.
“There’s no spitting or anything so no one knows you’re doing it,” Justin Billings, 31, told “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl. When he uses it, Billings tucks it – a tiny tea bag-like pouch filled with tobacco – discretely under his upper lip. There’s no lump in his cheek, and no juice.
This product will help tide smokers over when they go to places where they can’t light up any more because of smoking bans, like restaurants and offices. Billings uses snus in class to be able to pay attention and not just think about when the next break is – when he could have a smoke. Snus curbs the craving as the nicotine absorbs into his gums. He used to dread being stuck someplace where he couldn’t feed his habit.
Dr. Karl Fagerstrom says that snus, which originated in his home country of Sweden, is nowhere near as harmful as cigarettes. He’s a nicotine addiction scientist who was awarded a medal from the World Health Organization for his work on medications to help smokers quit.
Asked if he can put a percentage on how much less harmful snus is than smoking, Dr. Fagerstrom said, “There has been many authorities, the Royal College of Physicians in U.K. for example, and they say it’s somewhere between 99 to 90 percent less harmful than smoking. And I do agree with that. That’s the ballpark.”
Fagerstrom says snus is automatically less harmful because there’s no smoke and no inhaling, the cause of most tobacco-related disease. He says snus – which has the same level of nicotine as cigarettes – may raise blood pressure, but doesn’t cause heart disease.
“What about mouth, the gums or oral cancer? “ Stahl asks.
“The funny thing is that with the Swedish sort of snus, it hasn’t been found in studies that it does cause oral cancer,” Fagerstrom said.
Unlike American chewing tobacco that does cause cancer of the mouth, Swedish snus is regulated by the government as a food product, so the levels of toxins and carcinogens are kept to a bare minimum. That’s why doctors in Sweden recommend snus to people who simply can’t stop smoking, even though it’s clearly an addictive substance.
Sweden has now the lowest smoking rate in Europe and over the last 30 years there’s been a dramatic drop in lung cancer cases. Fagerstrom says snus played a big part, particularly with smokers who’ve failed with things like the nicotine patch or gum. “And the reason for that, we think, is that snus is cheaper, more available. But it also gives more nicotine, which is what they need,” he said.
“Of course, what Sweden is doing or has done is traded one addiction for another addiction,” Stahl told Fagerstrom. “That’s true. That is true. And this is why I’m saying this is not harm elimination. They are still addicted. And addiction is regarded as an unnatural state. So addiction is a problem. But it’s less of a problem than lung cancer,” he argued.
