22% of the world’s population smokes cigarettes, and 24% of Americans smoke.
The American Lung Association says cigarettes kill 438,000 U.S. smokers each year, and 8.6 million Americans have at least one major smoking-related disease.
There are lots of reasons people smoke, but the main reason they keep smoking is the powerfully addictive nicotine that is common to all tobacco products. What people don’t realize, however, is that nicotine is not a killer. In fact, the health threat posed by nicotine is no greater than that posed by caffeine, the addictive ingredient in coffee, tea and chocolate.
Ten million Americans have discovered they can satisfy their harmless nicotine cravings with any of the dozens of types of smokeless tobacco products, including new spitless tobacco. Some companies offer a refrigerated form of smokeless called snus, which a great deal of top-notch research in Sweden, where it’s widely used, has shown it to be far less dangerous than cigarettes.
American research shows that smokeless tobacco is actually 98% safer than cigarettes. There’s even data showing that the risk of dying from smokeless use is the same as the risk of dying from a car crash (infinitesimal!). Research published in July 2009 in the journal BMC Medicine shows there is no link between smokeless and the risk of cancer. British researchers came to that finding after analyzing 89 American and Scandinavian studies.
