Medical trials wanted on 'safer' tobacco

A tin of Granit brand snus which is banned for sale in New Zealand

Health researchers want to see local medical trials of a banned tobacco product touted as a safer alternative to cigarettes.

But the product has also exposed differences among tobacco control advocates - with one campaigner walking out of a seminar aimed at reducing smoking rates because of the presence of a smokeless tobacco company representative.

Advocacy groups want snus - oral tobacco prepackaged in small bags - to remain banned. Researchers, however, believe there are merits in smokeless tobacco products like snus.

Widely used in Sweden, snus has been hailed as a nicotine alternative with only a 20th of the risk of cigarettes - although just as addictive.

Overseas studies have found snus does not cause lung cancer or emphysema. And unlike chewing tobacco, the risk of oral cancer with Swedish snus is lower.

Former public health physician Dr Murray Laugesen said the culprit is cigarette smoke. "It is smoke that kills people, not the nicotine."

Snus was a less risky alternative, he said. Dr Laugesen was in the Department of Health, as it was then, which banned oral tobacco, including snus, in 1987 after reports associating mouth cancers with spit tobacco - chewing tobacco and snuff - in the United States.

The properties of snus were known to officials then, he said, but they did not have the regulatory framework and technology to distinguish between the Swedish form, and its variants, which were as risky as chewing tobacco.

Dr Laugesen said it was possible to end cigarette sales if smokers had an "attractive" source of addictive nicotine.

"They need to be able to get a regular supply of nicotine as they have been accustomed to get from cigarette smoke."

Snus consumption was an "invisible habit" that can give the same level of satisfaction that nicotine patches and gum appear not to match, said Dr Laugesen.

He does not advocate snus be imported for sale until research has been done locally.

"The difficulty is doing the research when it's banned."

Professor Julian Crane from the Wellington School of Medicine has applied for funding to trial snus here, although the ban may make a trial difficult.

But Shane Bradbrook, the director of Te Reo Marama (Maori Smokefree Coalition), does not want another tobacco product "foisted on Maori".

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) director Becky Freeman said the solution was not as simple.

"We have nicotine replacement therapies on the market. If smoking was just about substituting one nicotine product for cigarettes, we would've already solved this problem. Smoking isn't purely about getting a hit of nicotine."

The Ministry of Health does not plan to amend the law on snus at the moment.


Snus
* Moist ground oral tobacco, usually prepackaged in small bags made from the same material as teabags
* Placed beneath the upper lip, and kept there for a period of minutes to hours
* Provides a similar amount of nicotine as a cigarette, effective within 10 minutes
* Consumed mainly in Sweden and Norway
* Like chewing tobacco, it is banned from sale in New Zealand although it can be brought in privately