Snus

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Image:Snusgranit.jpg Snus is a moist powder tobacco, a kind of snuff. Snus is manufactured and mainly consumed in Sweden and Norway , where it is pronounced Template:IPA. The most usual way to consume snus is to place it beneath the upper lip, and keep it there for a time varying from a few minutes to several hours, according to taste. There are two main types of snus on the market:

original snus or lössnus is a loose, moist powder which can be portioned and rolled into a cylindrical shape with the fingertips, or using a prismaster tool. The end result is often referred to as a pris (pinch) or prilla or prell (slang for pris).
portionssnus, is prepackaged powder in small bags made from the same material as teabags. It comes in smaller quantities than the loose powder but is considered easier to handle (and expectorate) than the loose powder.

Swedish snus is made from air dried tobacco from various parts of the world. In earlier times tobacco for making snus used to be laid out for drying in Scania and Mälardalen. Later Kentucky tobaccos were used. The ground tobacco is mixed with water, salt, sodium carbonate and aroma and is prepared through heating, generally via steam. Moist snus contain more than 50% water, and the average use of snus in Sweden is approximately 800 grams (16 units) per person per year. Unlike American-sold oral tobacco that has gone through a fermentation process, snus has not.

Snus is sold mainly in Sweden and Norway, but can be found in outlets in various other countries frequented by Scandinavian tourists (with the notable exception of countries in the EU; see below). It is sold in small tins, which in the earlier years were made of porcelain, wood, silver or gold, but nowadays come in compressed paper or plastic. They contain 50g of loose snus or 24g of portion bags. Portion snus is usually sold in plastic boxes and loose snus is sold in paper boxes.

The price for the 50g product is approximately €2.50 in Sweden and €6.00 in Norway, and the total production of Swedish snus, mainly for the Scandinavian market, has been reported to be in excess of 300 million units per year. After the Norwegian government in June 2004 implemented a strict indoor smoking ban in public places, sales of snus skyrocketed, and several new variants of the product were put on the Norwegian market. When the Swedish government did the same thing in June 2005, sales of snus increased dramatically.

1 Health consequences
2 Debate among public health researchers
3 Brands and manufacturers
4 Published peer-reviewed studies
5 General media articles
6 External links
- 6.1 Articles

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Health consequences

Since snus is not intended nor recommended for inhalation, it does not affect the lungs like cigarettes do, although it does contain more nicotine than cigarettes. Because it is steam-cured, rather than fire-cured like smoking tobacco or other chewing tobacco, it contains lower concentrations of nitrosamines and other carcinogens that form from the partially anaerobic heating of proteins; 2.8 parts per mil for Ettan brand compared to as high as 127.9 parts per mil in American brands, according to a study by the State of Massachusetts Health Department. The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledges that Swedish men have the lowest rate of lung cancer in Europe, partly due to the low tobacco smoking rate, but does not argue for substituting snus for smoking, citing that the effects of snus still remain unclear. Since the level of carcinogens in snus is not zero, however, it still poses some increased risk for oral cancer, however small. The European Union banned the sale of snus in 1992, after a 1985 WHO study concluded that "oral use of snuffs of the types used in North America and western Europe is carcinogenic to humans", but a WHO committee on tobacco has also acknowledged that evidence is inconclusive regarding health consequences for snus consumers.

Only Sweden and EFTA-member Norway are exempt from the EU ban. A popular movement during the run-up to the 1994 referendum for Sweden's EU membership made the exemption of EU's criminalization of snus a part of the membership treaty.

Recent actions by many European Governments to limit the use of cigarettes has led to calls to lift the ban on snus as it is generally considered to be less harmful, both to the user and surroundings, than cigarette smoke.

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Debate among public health researchers

There is some debate among public health researchers over the use of "safer" tobacco or nicotine delivery systems, generally dividing along two lines of thought. Most researchers presently are of the "abstinence" belief, believing that no form of tobacco or nicotine use is acceptable or safe, and should be minimized among the population. A growing minority (primarily in the European Union and Canada) believes in "harm reduction," where the belief is generally that, while it should remain a goal to reduce addiction to nicotine in the population as a whole, the reduction of harm to the health of those who choose to use nicotine should override the need to reduce overall nicotine addiction. For example, some research [1] available today shows that snus use reduces or eliminates the risk of cancers that afflict other users of tobacco products such as "chewing tobacco" (the type primarily used in the United States and Canada, created in a process similar to cigarette tobacco) and cigarettes. It is hypothesized that the widespread use of snus by Swedish men (estimated at 30% of Swedish men, possibly because it is much cheaper than cigarettes), displacing tobacco smoking and other varieties of snuff, is responsible for the incidence of tobacco-related mortality in men being significantly lower in Sweden than any other European country; in contrast, since women are much less likely to use snus, their rate of tobacco-related deaths in Sweden is similar to that in other European countries. There is an increase in the prevalence of hypertension in Snus users, so the health effects are not all positive, however.

Snus is clearly much less harmful than other tobacco products; according to Kenneth Warner, director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network,

"The Swedish government has studied this stuff to death, and to date, there is no compelling evidence that it has any adverse health consequences. ... Whatever they eventually find out, it is dramatically less dangerous than smoking."

Opponents of snus sales maintain that, nevertheless, even the low nitrosamine levels in snus cannot be completely risk free, but snus proponents point out that inasmuch as snus is used as a substitute for smoking or a means to quit smoking, the net overall effect is positive, similar to the effect of nicotine patches, for instance.

In addition, rather obviously, this eliminates any exposure to "second-hand smoke", further reducing possible harm to other non-tobacco users. This is seen by public health advocates who believe in "harm reduction" as a reason for recommending snus in addition to other nicotine replacement therapies rather than continued use of cancer-causing nicotine delivery systems.

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