Smokeless tobacco and its harmful effects

Once considered a harmless pleasure, smokeless tobacco came to the forefrontof health news at the turn of the millennium due to increasing evidence thatit is just as dangerous as cigarette smoking. In fact, most medical professionals now agree that smokeless tobacco--also known as "chaw" or "chew"--is equally addictive and carcinogenic, and have come to consider the substance as contributing to the U.S. tobacco epidemic. Despite the medical community's efforts to warn people beginning in the mid-1980s, the use of smokeless tobaccowas on the rise as of the U.S. Surgeon General's report in 1997, which pinpointed young males as the largest growth area. Adolescent use of moist snuff, apowdered form of smokeless tobacco, has also skyrocketed, rising 1,500 percent between 1970 and 1991. As of 1995, 2.9 percent of Americans used some formof smokeless tobacco. From 1998 to 1999, the production of snuff rose eightpercent, even in the face of increased health warnings and tax hikes.

Read more: http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/19/Smokeless-tobacco.html