Snus and Other Smokeless Tobacco Products Going Mainstream, Offering Life-Saving Benefits to Inveterate Smokers
Posted on: Thursday, 27 April 2006, 18:00 CDT
LOUISVILLE, Ky., April 27 /PRNewswire/ -- News today of a major U.S. cigarette maker moving to test-market a modern smokeless tobacco product, called snus, has drawn the attention of the financial media and analysts. But a leading tobacco and health expert says the real focus should be on the implications for America's 25 million inveterate smokers -- those who have tried to quit and repeatedly failed.
"Aggressive nationwide promotion by major companies of spitless, smokeless tobacco products (also referred to as snus), which has been scientifically demonstrated to be 98% safer than cigarettes, may accomplish in a short time what decades of trivial 'tips for smokers' and millions of dollars of ineffective consumer education have failed to do, namely, get smokers to stop smoking," says Dr. Brad Rodu, Professor of Medicine and holder of Endowed Chair, Tobacco Harm Reduction Research at the University of Louisville. His research, published in the world's major medical journals over a 20-year period, supports the argument that inveterate smokers should switch to smokeless tobacco to save their lives.
"With the new media spotlight on smokeless products, the anti-tobacco movement is sure to raise objections," Dr. Rodu said. "But the science of tobacco harm reduction should trump unfounded prohibitionist alarms."
Britain's Royal College of Physicians supports Dr. Rodu's position: "As a way of using nicotine, the consumption of non-combustible [smokeless] tobacco is on the order of 10-1,000 times less hazardous than smoking, depending on the product." A National Cancer Institute-funded study found that smokeless tobacco could help millions of smokers quit. An earlier NCI-funded study concluded:
"[Smokeless] products pose a substantially lower risk to the user than do conventional cigarettes. This finding raises ethical questions concerning whether it is inappropriate and misleading for government officials or public health experts to characterize [smokeless] products as comparably dangerous with cigarette smoking."
Dr. Rodu's peer-reviewed data shows that smokeless tobacco users lose just 15 days of life (compared to non-tobacco-users), while smokers lose 8 years.
Despite knowing they risk disease and death, inveterate smokers are so addicted to nicotine that they continue to burn tobacco and inhale heavily toxic smoke. "Nicotine is a powerful drug, but nicotine is not the reason that smokers die prematurely," Dr. Rodu emphasizes. "In fact, nicotine itself is about as safe as caffeine, another addictive drug that's consumed by millions daily."
Conventional quit-smoking strategies don't work for inveterate smokers, largely because they demand what these smokers can't achieve: nicotine abstinence. Conventional approaches offer "coping" mechanisms, like the National Cancer Institute booklet, "How to Help Your Patients Stop Smoking," that tells doctors to advise patients: "Keep your hands busy -- doodle, knit, type a letter,""Cut a drinking straw into cigarette-sized pieces and inhale air," and "Keep a daydream ready to go."
Smokers are encouraged to use nicotine medications -- gum, pill and patch -- but they're expensive, designed for short-term use, and usually don't work. In fact, researchers at the University of Vermont and the University of Pittsburgh showed that over-the-counter nicotine medications have a success rate of just 7%.
Over the past decade, Dr. Rodu and his colleagues established the scientific foundation for an alternative quit-smoking strategy that is set in the real world. It's called harm reduction, and helps smokers switch to smokeless tobacco products for permanent nicotine maintenance. The strategy works, because smokeless products provide satisfying nicotine levels that are similar to smoking; they're 98% safer than cigarettes; they're socially acceptable (basically invisible); and they're affordable (about the same cost as cigarettes).
More information is available at http://www.smokersonly.org/, and in Dr. Rodu's book, For Smokers Only: How Smokeless Tobacco Can Save Your Life.
For More Information: Brad Rodu Professor of Medicine Endowed Chair, Tobacco Harm Reduction Research, University of Louisville 3rd Floor James Graham Brown Cancer Center 529 South Jackson Street Louisville, KY 40202 Office: 502-561-7273 Home: 502-384-6154 Fax: 502-561-7280 Email: brad.rodu@louisville.edu
Dr. Brad Rodu, Professor of Medicine, Endowed Chair, Tobacco Harm
CONTACT: Brad Rodu, Professor of Medicine, Endowed Chair, Tobacco HarmReduction Research, University of Louisville, +1-502-561-7273,Home: +1-502-384-6154, Fax: +1-502-561-7280, brad.rodu@louisville.edu
Web site: http://www.smokersonly.org/
Source: PRNewswire
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