"Contrary to a popular misperception, all forms of tobacco are not equally risky. Smokeless tobacco causes neither lung cancer nor other diseases of the lung, and users have no excess risk for heart attacks. In fact, the only consequential — but infrequent — adverse health effect of smokeless tobacco use is oral cancer. In 1981, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Deborah Winn and colleagues established that smokeless tobacco users are four times more likely to develop oral cancer than are nonusers of tobacco. However, this relative risk is only about one half the relative risk of oral cancer from smoking."

"Statistics from the CDC indicate that more than 1.5 million smokers have used smokeless tobacco to quit smoking. The transition is possible because the spike of nicotine that addicted smokers seek is effectively delivered by smokeless tobacco. Furthermore, newer smokeless tobacco products are essentially invisible in use, as they occupy no more space than a breath mint or a piece of chewing gum. A small, pre-packaged pouch of tobacco is tucked discreetly between the cheek and gum, where it delivers nicotine across the lining of the mouth. Spitting, once the stigma of outmoded and bulky "chewing" tobacco, is minimal or nonexistent. We recently published the first profiles of a group of "switchers." They came from all walks of life and switched to smokeless tobacco after smoking many years (25 years on average). Some switched to smokeless after months or years of abstinence and continuous craving. The transition proved stable in this group, as the average duration of smokeless tobacco use after quitting smoking was nine years.

What do switchers accomplish? Our research shows that they will live, on average, as long as those smokers who quit nicotine altogether. They reduce their risks for smoking-related illness and death, which is the goal of all existing smoking cessation efforts. There is, of course, no debate about the ideal way to achieve this goal: complete tobacco abstinence. But that ideal is not always attainable since many smokers are unable to give up nicotine. Switching to smokeless tobacco is a small compromise with the ideal which reaps large individual and public health gains."

"Health professionals often recommend prevention strategies that carry small risks. For example, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is evaluating the drug tamoxifen as a preventive agent for women with a high risk for breast cancer. However, although tamoxifen may reduce breast cancer risk, it increases the risk of cancer of the uterus. The NCI believes that the benefits from tamoxifen may outweigh the risks. Substituting smokeless tobacco for smoking is a wise risk-reduction strategy because it reduces all smoking-related risks and introduces no new risks.

It has been suggested that it is not appropriate for health professionals to recommend smokeless tobacco for smokers because the patient-switcher might develop mouth cancer. But concerned physicians and dentists understand that it is their moral and ethical obligation to help patients make informed lifestyle choices, all of which involve benefits and risks. One example is the recommendation to substitute oral methadone for intravenous heroin, a practice approved by the FDA in 1973 and now an accepted harm-reduction alternative for heroin users. Providing information about an alternative to smoking that is 98 percent safer is not only consistent with the highest standards of medical ethics, it is mandated by them."


Source: http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsid.744/healthissue_detail.asp

"For years, the public has been warned that smokeless tobacco is dangerous. But how does it compare to smoking cigarettes?

"Smokeless tobacco is, without a question of a doubt, far less harmful than cigarette smoking," said Ken Warner, dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

But public health advocates disagree about how much safer smokeless tobacco is. One study by London's Royal College of Physicians found it to be more than 10 times safer than cigarettes.

Both products contain large amounts of nicotine. But nicotine alone is about as unhealthy as caffeine. It is the cigarette's smoke, which delivers the nicotine to the lungs, that is most lethal.

"I think there's a great opportunity here to understand the difference between the drug and how it's delivered, and if we can move to cleaner forms of delivery for nicotine, far, far fewer people are going to die," said David Sweanor, legal counsel for the Non-Smokers' Rights Association.

The safest way to deliver nicotine, health experts say, is through a patch, inhaler or gum. But those products provide such small amounts of nicotine that only about 10 percent of smokers who use them succeed in quitting.

Smokeless tobacco -- with high amounts of nicotine -- may be a more realistic alternative."

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/QuitToLive/story?id=1322995

"Smokeless tobacco products, as used in Europe and North America, do not appear to increase cancer risk. A large meta-analysis, published in the open access journal BMC Medicine, has shown that snuff as used in Scandinavia has no discernible effect on the risk of various cancers. Products used in the past in the USA may have increased the risk, but any effect that exists now seems likely to be quite small."

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090728201734.htm

Regarding Snus-

"Even its critics admit that snus is less harmful than other forms of smokeless tobacco. And it is far less harmful than cigarette smoking."

Source: http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/features/snus-tobacco-health-risks

"Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States,2 accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths, or 1 of every 5 deaths, in the United States each year.3,4"

CDC does not report on comparisons between ratio death rates of smokers per capita to smokeless tobacco users per capita, in fact, it does not report on death rates from smokeless tobacco use at all on the basic fact sheet of smokeless tobacco. Instead the CDC opts for the scare tactic of "SMOKELESS TABOCCU IS NUT SAEF'R DEN SMORKING!"

Source: CDC fact sheet on Smoking and Smokeless tobacco (Print outs, I do not have a link, google it)

My final statements:

Smokeless tobacco is without a doubt safer than smoking cigarettes, but still not safe. Snus is the safest smokeless tobacco option, but I switched from smoking to dip about a week ago and I've noticed a distinct improvement in my cardio already (I used to smoke up to 10 cigarettes a day but I am a frequent jogger and train MMA for 2 hours four days a week, as well as varied calisthenics at home). Using dip tobacco has not only decreased my spending on tobacco products (a can of grizzly wintergreen, my personal choice costs only four - five dollars and lasts three times as long as a pack of smokes which costs twice as much) but has also left me feeling healthier and feeling safer about my general help and more confident in taking steps toward quitting nicotine addiction once and for all. I also enjoy smokeless tobacco now much more than I enjoyed smoking and have no urge to smoke at all. To close, smokers out there who are concerned about their health, consider switching to smokeless tobacco products for your own health.

-Lucidx1