Snus should be Ban

Published on September 22, 2009 7:10 AM

Snus is an innovation of Sweden. The government there has been working very hard to test the product from the last many years. Recently Sweden Government proposed to ban 'snus,' a moist tobacco popular across Scandinavia that is sucked rather than chewed or smoked.

As it is known, in Sweden, tobacco use has been manifestly different than in Canada for several generations, and men did not move from oral tobacco to cigarettes as they did in most other western countries. Some have suggested that this may be because Sweden, as a neutral country, did not share the "returning soldiers" experience that increased cigarette use. Another reason which reduced cigarette use in Sweden is because snus is currently banned in Australia, Israel and all the European Union countries other than Sweden.

The small, teabag-like pouches, also called moist snuff, are used by nearly one million Swedes. Placed under the user's lip, they quickly deliver a nicotine rush to the blood and a strong salt and herbs flavor in the mouth, according to a previous study. While cigarette sales have decreased by 50 percent in Sweden over the past 30 years, snus remained on the up, with sales rising from some 2,500 tonnes a year in the 1970s to almost 7,500 tonnes in 2008.

Snus also is popular in other parts of the Nordic region. For example in Norway, outside of the EU, some 400,000 people use it on a regular basis while 100,000 Finns have to travel to Sweden to stock up, official data showed. Sweden is the only EU member state where snus sales are permitted after it obtained an exemption when the European Union banned snus in 1992. Swedish Match, the number one snus manufacturer in the Nordic country, related sales of 660 million euros (965 million dollars) in Sweden in 2008.

Swedish Government reported that snus could be ban in 2010 and Swedish Match's head of public affairs, Patrick Hildingsson, said that would bring "a window of chance" to make their case for legalization elsewhere.

In February, Philip Morris International set up a joint chance with Swedish Match and last year British American Tobacco broke off Sweden's second-biggest cigarette maker, Fiedler & Lundgren.
While snus has started to be gradually rolled out in the United States, South Africa and Canada, the ban remains in place across Europe, explained scientists. Swedish Trade Minister Ewa Bjoerling told that other forms of "oral" tobacco are allowed to be sold within the EU and pointed out that her country has one of the lowest rates of smoking.
However scientists argued that mouth and pancreatic cancers and also cardiovascular disease are increased among people which use snus.