Imperial Tobacco to Test Market Smokeless Products

Source from:  Lisa Arrowsmith Canoe Friday September 14, 2007 EDMONTON (CP) 09/17/2007

Imperial Tobacco Canada announced Wednesday it will test market a new type of smokeless tobacco in Canada called snus - and while the company is touting it as a safer alternative to cigarettes, it's been banned as a health risk in most of Europe. Benjamin Kemball, president and CEO of Imperial, said the powdered tobacco product will be sold at 230 retail outlets in Edmonton in the coming months to determine whether it might catch on with consumers. Users wad the moist powder between their lips and gum, where it dissolves. Kemball points to recent studies from Sweden, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia which suggest that snus is less harmful than cigarettes. "According to these independent reports, there is no increase to the risk of lung (or oral) cancer among snus users, compared to people who have never used any tobacco products at all," he said in an interview. "We should be looking at products such as this because if people are able to move away from cigarettes and to this sort of product, there will be a substantial reduction in risk to those people." The European Union banned snus in all countries except Sweden and Norway in 1992 after a World Health Organization report concluded that oral tobacco products were carcinogenic to humans. It's also banned in Australia. In 2004, the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice upheld the European ban, ruling that the dangers of snus merited that it be outlawed. In an article published in the medical journal The Lancet in May, researchers from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's School of Public Health examined a Swedish study on snus use. The study followed 280,000 male construction workers for 20 years, and found that snus use did not increase the risks of oral cancer, whereas smoking more than doubled the risk. Snus users had a higher risk for pancreatic cancer than people who have never smoked, but the risk of the illness was still highest for smokers. The authors weren't suggesting that smokers be advised to switch to snus but instead recommended that "clinicians advise their smoking patients on more flexible ways to quite smoking with existing approved medicines, rather than snus." There's also concern about the way that the product could be marketed in Canada, especially if it's marketed the same way some chewing-type tobaccos are. According to figures from the Canadian Cancer Society, in Norway, where snus is also used, the incidence of smoking in males between 16 and 74 fell from 50 per cent in 1985 to 36 per cent in 2006. Daily snus use climbed from 3.2 per cent in 1985 to 11.2 per cent in 2006, with that number as high as 17.9 per cent for young men under 24. Enditem