The Misleading And Harmful Public Message About Smokeless Tobacco is a report published on Biomed Central, the report is well worth reading if you are a smokeless tobacco user, selected paragraphs include :-

The use of Western smokeless tobacco (ST) products is associated with a very small risk of life-threatening disease (with estimates in the range of a few percent of the risk from smoking, or even less). This means that smokers can realize substantial health benefits by switching to ST, an obvious substitute. But consumers and policy makers have little chance of learning that ST is much less dangerous than smoking because popular information provided by experts and advocates overstates the health risks from ST relative to cigarettes.

The negative health consequences of smoking cigarettes are well known. What is less well known is that not all tobacco products create similar levels of risk. In particular, use of Western smokeless tobacco (ST) is substantially less harmful than smoking cigarettes. This should not be surprising, given that ST use does not expose the body to the harmful combustion products and assault on the lungs that result from smoking. But even many health experts do not realize there is a major difference, perhaps because of repeated messages about “tobacco” (usually referring just to cigarettes), which imply that all products made from this plant have the same health implications.

Health advocates, particularly those in public service, have an affirmative ethical duty to tell the truth. It is difficult to justify keeping the truth from people, even when knowing it might be harmful; it is clearly unjustified when it would be beneficial.

Read the report and draw your own conclusions.

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Tags: smokeless tobacco, Snuff, snuff health

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Snuff, Snuff Tobacco & Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.