All the information I see comes from places like stopsmoking.com or truth.com, all places with an agenda. I never really though smokeless tobbacco could be near as bad as smoking. I mean, there is no second hand smoke, and you can always wash your mouth out, but not your lungs!
This presumes that washing out your mouth undoes the irritation of the mucosa that is believed to lead to oral cancer. That is not the case.
If you don’t believe the anti-smoking lobby, would you believe the Mayo Clinic?
My uncle chewed for years, and had two episodes of oral cancer-the last time they had to remove some of his saliva glands.
Smokeless tobacco is not risk-free (nothing is) but the general mortality risk is 5 to 9% of smoked cigarettes.
Your chance of oral cancer is higher than of a cig smoker with lung cancer. On the other hand, unless you are clueless, it is easy to detect and remove, so your chances of dying are rather low. However, it also damages your gums, causing expensive denatl bills, and a higher chance of losing teeth.
So, IF you absoluteley had to use tobacco, then a little snuff/chew once in a while - as long as you promise twice yearly Dentist and Doctors visits- is much safer than smoking cigs. More or less that same is true with pipes and cigars- but with cigars you have to be careful to not inhale.
Th eUK banned the baccy pouches that you put in your mouth, Skoal Bandits and even now the industry is trying to sneak something else in,
There’s a lot of propaganda from the pros and the antis, but the industry know that its user base in developed nations is shrinking rapidly and is desperate to get us hooked on something else.
Such is the tarnished reputation of the tobacco industry that any claims it makes about a reduced cacer risk are treated with a cerain amount of disdain, and anyway when it comes to poltical considerations, it would be very easy for the opponents of any elected governement to point out that legalisation would amount to a tacit acceptance of a number of fatalities from tobacco related illness, this would go down very badly with the electorate in Europe, but particualarly the UK which is bringing in ban on smoking in public places.
One other concern with smokeless tobacco is that it provides a very large initial bolus of nicotine to the dipper, much higher than the gum or patch or nasal spray, or even the cigarette. This can, in susceptible individuals, cause a bit of artery spasm. That can be a problem for folks with coronary artery disease.
1.) I used to work with a guy who chewed. He used to spit in a Coke can, which he’f leave lying around where some unintended vixctim could accidentaly … well, I’;ll leave it to you. He’s also spit into the garbage cans, which was disgusting. I hate cigarette smikers (the smoke gives me a headache), but I’d take them over this, anyday.
2.) I used to work in a plant that made nitrocellulose (guncotton, among other things). The stuff is insanely inflammable and, if confined, explosive. They were paranoid about keeping even the temptation of flames and sources of ignition away from the plant. There was a “halfway house” on the way in where you were supposed to ditch all your smokes, not to mention matches and lighters. Just before you got out, there was a vending machine full of “smokeless” so that the hard-core nicotine addicts could have their fix without risk of blowing the place up. I think it’s the one case where chewing tobacco proved a significant health plus.
Bolus? Artery Spasm? Please enlighten me. 
Cregler L. Substance abuse in sports: The impact of cocaine, alcohol, steroids, and other drugs. In: Williams RA, ed. The Athlete and Heart Disease. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 1999:131-153.
http://www.trytostop.org/more_info/other-tobacco-products.asp
Just out of curiosity, has anybody heard of smokeless cigarettes? I couls heve sworn I’d seen them. If not that then how do the little vaporizers that heat but don’t burn the tobacco compare?
Any Gov’t that bans smokeless tobacco/“snus”, but not cigs is silly and ignorant. :rolleyes:
Not that “snus” are by any means safe or even close to safe, but cigs are the real killer here. :mad:
RJR Nabisco tried a smokeless cigarette. They called it the Premier. OTTOMH
It would not light with butane lighters.
The intsruction manual it came with included something like 30 steps, none of them unnecessary.
The nugget of activated charcoal that made the Premier smokeless also made it extremely difficult to draw air through the cigarette and into your mouth.
They smelled bad.
They tasted worse.
Surgeon General C Everett Coope revealed that you could easily open the Premier, remove the charcoal and tobacco and turn it into a crack pipe.
For a full rundown see the film Barbarians At The Gates, or check out the entry in Paradox Press Big Book Of Failures.(Or was it in the Bad Idea section of the Big Book Of Bad?)
Do you have a cite for that? I’d always heard that the risk of cancer from using oral tobacco was much less than that from smoking.
And there’s one more method of smokeless tobacco that I haven’t seen mentioned here (and my preferred method – I started up again and am back to being a heavy user) – nasal snuff. I’ve looked at the literature, but there doesn’t seem to be much research on its risks. There was one study of snuff users in India that showed long-term irritation of the nasal membranes, but to my knowledge there’s never been a case of nasal cancer linked with snuff usage. It’s probably the safest form of tobacco usage.
And the EU ban of oral tobacco is absolutely stupid, for multiple reasons. I just pray and pray some more that nasal snuff is going to stay under their radar, because virtually all commercially available snuff is made in England or Germany.
Check my cite above.
Oral cancer, he said. Overall cancer risk is higher with cigs, mostly with lung cancer. But your oral cancer risk increase is lower (but not zero!) from smoking than from chewing …
No, he said that a user of oral tobacco had a greater chance of getting oral cancer than a smoker had of getting lung cancer. That’s what I was disputing.
I recently applied for supplimental medicare insurance. My wife and I investigated and she applied for a “non-smoker” policy and I applied for a “smoker”. Of course things did not go smoothly and they sent me a questionaire. On it they asked if I’d smoked a cigarette in the last year. Fact was that I’d been smoking up a storm with some cheap cigars, but hadn’t touched a cigarette since 1997. I discussed this with the rep and she said that cigarettes are what they are worried about. Take that information for whatever it is worth.
P.S. I quit smoking the cigars on the 2nd of January and it had nothing to do with a resolution.