19 June, 2008 by cigarettes
The sales of snus and other smokeless tobacco products, such as small cigars and snuff, have been "robust," researchers say, in part because they cost significantly less than cigarettes.
By Richard Craver | Journal Reporter
Published: June 12, 2008
Smoking may be in decline in the United States, but overall tobacco use isn't, according to a report from the Harvard School of Public Health.
The report, published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, focused on the sales of cigarettes and other tobacco products from 1998 to 2007.
"Since 1998, tobacco sales in the United States have declined by 2 percent a year, which has been hailed as an indicator that smoking itself is on the decline," the researchers said. The researchers cited cigarette sales declining 18 percent from 21.1 billion packs in 2000 to 17.4 billion packs in 2007.
But 30 percent of the decline in cigarette sales was offset by the "robust" sale of small cigars, snuff, snus and roll-your-own products, the researchers found.
Those products typically have lower retail prices and have a significantly lower excise-tax rate than cigarettes. For example, the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes is 39 cents, compared with 4 cents on a pack of small cigars.
"The weekly cost for a typical user of a premium moist-snuff brand is 55 percent less than for a typical cigarette smoker," the researchers said.
"Thus, the apparent magnitude of overall decline in tobacco use in the United States may be illusory," said Greg Connolly, the lead researcher and the director of the Tobacco Control Research program at the Harvard school.
The major U.S. tobacco manufacturers, led by Reynolds American Inc., have been aggressively developing and marketing smokeless products, as well as buying smokeless-tobacco companies, to counter the decline in their cigarette sales.
For example, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is testing its Camel Snus product in 17 markets, including the Triad and many major metropolitan areas. The tobacco is pasteurized -- not fermented -- and does not require the consumer to spit, Reynolds said.
Sales of other tobacco products from 2000 to 2007 increased by 1.1 billion cigarette pack equivalents -- an estimate the researchers based on the products' tobacco and nicotine content -- of 714 million in the moist-snuff category, 256 million in roll-your-own and 130 million in small cigars.
"Lower federal and state taxes on these noncigarette products are keeping tobacco addiction ‘affordable' and encouraging preventable disease and death," Connolly said. "All forms of tobacco should be taxed equally, and state campaigns to curb tobacco use should address this loophole for death."
But in an April 9, 2007, article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Connolly held out promise for noncigarette products.
"If we can get everyone to switch to smokeless tomorrow, it would be a public-health miracle," he said. "But that type of thinking is totally unrealistic. It is a fantasy."
Danny McGoldrick, the vice president of research for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that his group favors the raising of excise taxes on all tobacco products "to help discourage smokers from trading one addiction for another. Those products may be less harmful, but they are not harmless."
Smokeless products are drawing support from some anti-smoking groups as a less-hazardous way to consume tobacco. Those groups, as well as Reynolds, want any proposed Federal Drug Administration regulation of tobacco products to allow for the marketing of smokeless products as reduced risk compared with cigarettes.
"We should not delay in allowing snus to compete with cigarettes for market share, and we should be prepared to accurately inform smokers about the relative risks of cigarettes, snus and approved smoking-cessation medications," said Jonathan Foulds, the director of the School of Public Health Tobacco Dependence program at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Maura Payne, a spokeswoman with Reynolds, said that tobacco consumers are weighing all kinds of factors, including price, comparing risks of products and when and how they can use the products.
"It is simply not sound public policy to use excise taxes as a means of dissuading people from switching to lower-risk categories from higher-risk categories if they want to continue using tobacco products," Payne said.
Bill Godshall, the executive director of SmokeFree Pennsylvania, said that it is "unethical" of Connolly to tell smokers that noncigarette products are just as dangerous as cigarettes.
"Although smokeless tobacco is just as addictive as cigarettes, and should not be used by those who are not addicted to nicotine, cigarettes are about 100 times deadlier than smokeless-tobacco products," he said.
Stephen Pope, the chief global-market strategist with Cantor Fitzgerald Europe, said that price eventually plays a determining factor for tobacco users.
"We have seen examples of how real hardened smokers will cling onto their favorite brand through a few small price changes, be it in the manufacturers' price or by tax increases," Pope said. "However, eventually the price pain will be too much even for them, and there will be a migration into a cheaper offering.
"For the smoker looking for a quick rush, then snuff has been seen as a cigarette substitute," he said. "Whereas, I have no doubt that there is a whole new approach and marketing ploy in play regarding cigars."