Lars Ramstrom Director, Institute for Tobacco Studies, Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract
’Smokeless tobacco’ SLT, is not one specific product but a broad category of products with widely different characteristcs regarding health risks. There are low-toxicity SLT products, e.g. Swedish snus, with health risks just slighly above those of NRT.
Experiences from Sweden and Norway have demonstrated that smokers who use snus as cessation aid have higher success rate than those using e.g. NRT. Among men in Sweden snus is also the most commonly used cessation aid, and 49% of men who have quit daily smoking have used snus. Some of them remain snus users, others have eventually quit snus as well and become free from tobacco.
The WHO Global Report: Mortality Attributable to Tobacco shows that Swedish men have lower mortality attributable to tobacco than men in any other country in Europé. A deeper analysis of the WHO data shows that the ’mortality deficit’ differs between age groups and is larger the higher the proportion of snus users is. This supports the assumption that the use of snus has been a major factor behind the favourable situation.
If all smokers had access to products like snus, AND, to truthful information about their potential usefulness, many lives could be saved.
