Tobacco.org

Conclusion

Tobacco smokers who switch to snus will reduce the risks of their tobacco use. Based on the Swedish experience, there is a strong prima facie case on public health and ethical grounds for recommending snus to inveterate smokers who want to reduce their health risks and for considering public policies (such as lower taxes for snus and public information campaigns) to promote its use by smokers. The legitimate concerns of THR opponents will be addressed by better regulation of all tobacco products rather than either bans on snus (as in Europe and Australia) or misinformation about the health risks of snus (as in the US where its sale is legal). Public health and tobacco control professionals should accordingly work for better regulations to make all tobacco products less attractive to new (and existing) users rather than attempting to discourage smokers from switching to snus through misleading claims that snus use is as risky as cigarette smoking.

So we reiterate: smokeless tobacco has low appeal for the overwhelming majority of the world's smokers. There are profound risks in letting tobacco industry tigers off their leash to use snus to subvert the hard-won provisions of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—provisions that include a ban on all tobacco advertising. Such a ban has already been achieved in some nations, but not in the US, from where much of the enthusiasm for snus now comes.

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