Aaland
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:09 PM

The introduction of smokeless tobacco snus, a popular product in Sweden and Norway, into US markets is proceeding apace. Snus isn't very popular in the rest of Europe -- or at least any notional popularity is ineffectual -- because sales of it are banned in the EU (excepting Sweden). [Surely we all recall that Norway is not in the EU.] Two years ago Vice Squad noted how snus was certain to doom the EU, thanks to Finland's Aaland archipelago -- historically, culturally, and linguistically Swedish, Aaland is none too pleased at not being allowed to sell snus, because of Finland's membership in the EU. And none of those Finnish EU parliamentarians represent Aaland.

Aaland is currently reflecting its sense of abuse over snus by threatening to vote against the EU's Lisbon treaty. (Recall Vice Squad's post from late March.) That alone would not keep the treaty from entering into force, as long as EU-member Finland (and all other EU members) do ratify the treaty. An Aaland rejection, though, would complicate internal Finnish politics, as it would have to be settled to what extent EU rules would apply in Aaland. Here's an article with some helpful background, suggesting that Aaland's principled position is one of opposition to prohibition (of snus) without (EU) representation.

Labels: EU, federalism, Finland, snus

 
Aaland to Opt Out of EU Reform?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:07 PM

Ever since Vice Squad raised the alarm in February 2006, European Unionphiles have not been sleeping soundly for fear that the smokeless tobacco snus could lead to the unravelling of the EU. Sure, the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon (the watered-down replacement for the twice-popularly rejected European Constitution) in December of 2007 heartened the Unionists. But what will Aaland say? The semi-autonomous archipelago, officially part of Finland, though Swedish (and hence snusish) in culture, might choose not to ratify the Lisbon Reform Treaty! A treaty rejection in Aaland would not consign the Lisbon Treaty to a place next to its Constitutional predecessor on the ignominious trash heap of failed international agreements. As long as Finland and all the other state members of the EU ratify Lisbon, it will go into effect. But if Aaland opts against ratification, the treaty would not apply to Aaland, even as it would apply to the rest of Finland. Aaland would essentially be out of the EU, despite being part of a state that is (otherwise) an EU member. What discord follows?

Labels: EU, federalism, Finland, snus, Sweden

 
EU Snus Ban Safe
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:03 PM

Last week an EU committee, the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks, released a report (available here) on snus, a smokeless tobacco product popular in Sweden but not legally available for sale in the rest of the EU. The committee noted that snus carries some health risks, and that its apparent success in Sweden at lowering the harms from smoking is not necessarily reproducible in other countries. So the EU's snus ban -- from which Sweden negotiated an exception at the time it joined the EU -- appears to be safe for now. Swedish Match, a major snus producer, tries to put a brave face on the committee report, but it seems to be a setback to their interest in ending the ban.

One of the attractions of a principled approach to vice policy is that it sidesteps the sort of special pleading that seems to dog vice control. Vices that someone disapproves of see their harms emphasized and their benefits minimized, while an approved vice receives the opposite treatment. And for many folks, the special pleading takes an obvious form: their own vices should be legal, but those unfamiliar vices of troublesome others, well, those vices should be suppressed.

Labels: EU, robustness, snus, Sweden

 
Smoking Ban Winners, Illinois Version
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:44 PM

Years ago Vice Squad offered its first take on businesses that have been helped by public smoking bans -- prominent among them are outdoor heater manufacturers, and, in countries where it is legal, snus. The Chicago Tribune this week pointed to another business that is profiting from public smoking bans: makers of little smoking huts, shacks that are similar to some bus stop shelters and that cannot be fully enclosed (to comply with the law). The huts, according to the Trib article, can cost anywhere between $2,000 and $30,000, depending on how elaborate they are:

The shelter manufacturers won't release numbers but said their business has soared.

One leading supplier, Tafco Corp. of Melrose Park, estimates that Illinois orders for shelters have doubled.

How long will these shelters be tolerated? After all, look at what is happening to those early smoking ban winners, the outdoor heating manufacturers.

Labels: Illinois, smoking ban, snus

 
Mischievous Aaland
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:10 PM

Never trust an archipelago. Aaland is an autonomous part of Finland that is culturally and linguistically Swedish. Smokeless tobacco snus can be sold legally in Sweden, but nowhere else in the European Union -- and Finland, including semi-autonomous Aaland, is part of the EU. Ferries out of Aaland had been selling snus, so the EU took the semi-Swedish snus-sellers to court, leading Vice Squad to speculate that Aaland might choose to leave the EU rather than give up snus. Well, Aaland lost the court case, but dropped its talk of EU secession. Vice Squad was duped into thinking that Aaland had fallen into line, and even committed that view to print. But tonight we learn that Aaland hasn't actually bothered to comply with the court order by curtailing snus sales. The EU is playing hardball: "The European Commission decided on Tuesday to impose a significant fine on the province." The fine is at 2 million euros, and rising, and that semi-autonomous status also applies to EU fines, for which Aaland, and not Finland more generally, is responsible.

Labels: EU, Finland, snus, Sweden

 
All the Snus...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:28 PM

....that's fit to print. Yes, the New York Times has joined Vice Squad on the snus bandwagon -- let's hope they catch on to that important story about the smoking ban and British bingo parlours next. Most of the Times article will be familiar to the loyal Vice Squad reader, though I did find some speculation about why snus might be safer than US dip-style chewing tobacco to be of interest: the thought is that it has to do with the fact [I didn't know this, either] that snus is pasteurized, while the American dip is, um, fermented. Just the facts' ma'am. Another fact new to me is that Sweden and snus have gone together for approximately two centuries. My final observation on the Times story is that when someone announces that they 'are not a health fascist,' you should keep your eye on your personal liberties.

Thanks to a friend of Vice Squad for the pointer. And let's hope that the Times puts a full-time reporter on the snus beat.

Labels: snus, Sweden

 
Snus
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:23 PM

Vice Squad is not alone in thinking that snus should be legal throughout the European Union, and that such legality would almost certainly lower the overall health toll associated with tobacco products. Our ally is "Bacon Butty", who explains some of the shortcomings of this summer's EU preliminary report on the health risks of smokeless tobacco. Thanks to the Adam Smith Institute for the pointer.

Labels: EU, harm reduction, snus, Sweden, tobacco

 
Anti-Anti-Tobacco
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:56 PM

Slate's William Saletan argues that in some dimensions the war against smoking and tobacco has gotten out of hand. (OK, maybe that isn't quite strong enough. The article is entitled "Kicking Butt: The International Jihad Against Tobacco.") One of Saletan's leading examples is Vice Squad obsession snus:

The latest target is snus, a tobacco product that delivers nicotine without smoke. Despite studies showing it's far safer than cigarettes, most European countries allow smoking but prohibit snus. In the U.S., sponsors of legislation to regulate tobacco under the FDA are resisting amendments that would let companies tell consumers how much safer snus is. The president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids complains that snus will "increase the number of people who use tobacco," letting "the big companies win no matter what tobacco products people use." But the goal shouldn't be to stamp out tobacco or make companies lose. The goal should be to save lives.

Though Saletan and Vice Squad feel similarly about snus, I am not sure that adopting as a general goal that of saving lives is necessarily a good idea (though to argue against it, admittedly, makes one sound uncharitable or worse). There are lots of things that people enjoy that are a bit risky, and perhaps more lives could be saved (or prolonged, rather) by using coercion to curtail these activities. But the decision to pursue these risky activities might be perfectly reasonable; maybe some sort of compromise might be appropriate?

If you click over to the Slate article, check out the links on the left side to some previous Saletan articles that deal with non-tobacco vices, including coffee, sex, and fatty foods.

Labels: robustness, smoking, snus, tobacco

 
Snus in Norway
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:19 AM

Time permits only one brief note and link, so it has to be about snus. Norway remains outside the EU, allowing Vice Squad obsession snus to be available in Norway. The public smoking ban is helping to promote snus use in Norway, even though most of the Norsepeople think that snus causes cancer. (OK, only something like 6% of the adult population uses the stuff.) Here's a recent newspaper article with the story.

Labels: snus

 
Snus Alternative
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:13 AM

The Swedish smokeless tobacco snus to some extent has been able to capitalize on public smoking bans -- some smokers turn to snus for nicotine in locations where smoking is verboten. But the extent of this capitalization is pretty restricted, so far being felt mostly in Sweden and Norway. Snus itself is illegal in the European Union outside of Sweden, and Norway is not in the EU. So a British smoker, for instance, does not have ready access to snus.

Not to worry, hapless British smoker: you can rub some nicotine-containing gel (available at Harrods, among other fine establishments) onto your palms when you feel a craving coming on. There is some outrage, of course, that someone would offer a product designed to take advantage of those benevolent public smoking bans.

I am not outraged, but vaguely concerned. What sounds like a single "dose" of the gel is said to contain one-tenth the nicotine of a cigarette. That isn't much nicotine, but the recent tragic death of the young woman in New York from an overdose of a compound found in pain-reducing ointments does make me wonder. Nicotine is poisonous in significant doses -- it leads to flu-like symptoms -- and when dissolved in water (or this gel, presumably), it can be absorbed through the skin. According to Tara Parker-Pope's book Cigarettes (page 55), "Hundreds of tobacco workers each year become ill from an overdose of nicotine as a result of handling tobacco leaves." Then again, people presumably will limit their use of the gel to levels that satisfy their nicotine urges, which would mitigate or eliminate any overdose risk.

Labels: Britain, EU, snus, tobacco

 
Snus Alarm?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:24 PM

A friend of Vice Squad directs our attention to a notice in the Health Affairs blog about some articles on snus in this week's Lancet. Snus is the coolly-named four-lettered snuff-like product from Sweden -- is snus the IKEA of tobacco commodities? -- that would lead to a vast improvement in health if switched to by all current smokers (and if no other changes followed, such as diminished desistance or increased uptake of smoking or snus.) But making snus available for harm reduction purposes is a controversial policy, in part because it might legitimate tobacco and perhaps could lead to increased smoking. Further, snus is not perfectly safe in its own right -- there is some evidence that snus increases the risk of pancreatic cancer, for instance. Snus currently is legal in Sweden, but nowhere else within the European Union.

The Lancet articles attempt to put some quantitative markers on the trade-offs around snus use. According to the post at the Health Affairs blog, one of the Lancet articles (I do not yet have access to the originals), calculates that it would take 14 or more current non-smokers to take up snus to offset the health gain from one current smoker switching to snus. (It sounds as if the possibility that snus itself could eventually promote smoking is left out of the calculation, though.) In any event, the new articles do not appear to change what Vice Squad has considered to be the standard snus story, namely, that smoking is so bad for health that snus is likely to offer an attractive option to reduce total tobacco-related harms. Snus should be especially attractive (and I believe made available) to people who have been foiled in multiple attempts to quit smoking; I am not much of a fan of reducing the options to "quit" or "die" for those smokers with a demonstrated difficulty in quitting when there's a third alternative.

The most recent prior snus-posting at Vice Squad appeared on March 29, 2007.

Labels: EU, harm reduction, snus, Sweden

 
Snus Review
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:00 PM

A report (129-page pdf here) has just been released that reviews previous research on the health effects of snus, the smokeless tobacco product popular in Sweden. The main finding of the report coheres with the standard wisdom, that snus use is much less dangerous than smoking, which is not to say that snus is perfectly safe. There is one outlier piece of research in the review, which was sponsored (that is, the newly-released review was sponsored) by the New Zealand Ministry of Health, indicating that snus use by construction workers in the 1970s led to significantly greater cardiovascular disease and overall mortality, though many subsequent studies failed to replicate that finding. The anomaly might be explained in part by a move to milder snus over time. Another point stressed by the report is that we still are quite unsure about the health effects of long-term snus use.

The review is careful when it looks (pages 79-81) at whether the promotion of snus will lead to lower aggregate harms to health. Surely any current smoker who fully switches to snus is better off, assuming that he or she would have continued to smoke in the absence of snus. But among the complicating factors are that perhaps switching to snus prevents a cessation of tobacco use that otherwise would have occurred, or snus might be used as a supplement to smoking. Further, some people might initiate tobacco use via snus and then migrate to cigarettes. Nevertheless, if snus really holds as little risk to health as it appears to hold, then its introduction is almost sure to reduce negative health effects in the short to medium term.

Labels: snus

 
Stockpiling Snus
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:36 AM

Yes, the Swedes are doubling the tax on Vice Squad's favorite harm reducer, the smokeless tobacco snus. So there's an end of the year run on snus to beat the foreseeable price increase; under refrigeration, according to the linked article, snus can remain fresh for a year.

Labels: snus, tobacco

 
Vice Squad Relocating?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:05 AM

As happy as we have been operating our corner of the blogosphere out of Chicago, we are tempted to move...

...to Snusville, Iowa, of course. It's a neighborhood in Des Moines, named after our favorite harm-reducer. (That is, Snusville is named after our favorite harm reducer. Des Moines is what, French for 'some less'?)

Labels: snus

 
All the Snus That's Fit to Print
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:41 AM

British American Tobacco has joined the struggle to make snus available throughout the European Union. It isn't even legal in Britain right now, but BAT is "trialling" snus in South Africa.

The Observer article that brings us this news also notes that Swedish snus manufacturing dates from 1822.

While trolling through the British papers, I came across a story in the Telegraph with more about how snus will undo the EU.

Labels: EU, snus

 
Snus
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:02 AM

For my own demented purposes I wanted to put in one place a set of links to some of the past Vice Squad discussion of (the Swedish smokeless tobacco) snus -- can a composite absinthe post be far behind? Here goes:

January 2, 2004: Snus and Harm Reduction
August 9, 2004: US Snus Use
September 8, 2004: EU Snus Ban
October 4, 2004: Snus Smuggling
November 30, 2004: Update on Snus and Cancer
January 12, 2005: Court Rules Against Snus
April 10, 2005: Snus Fridges
February 7, 2006: Snus Destroys the EU

Labels: snus

 
Will Vice Policy Break Up the EU?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:30 PM

Two traditional Vice Squad preoccupations, snus and international organizations (like the World Trade Organization and the European Union), are coming together in an unexpected fashion. Snus is that Swedish smokless tobacco that is illegal in the rest of the European Union, even though snus is almost surely much safer than cigarettes, which are a legal product throughout the EU. The internal free trade that the EU requires on alcohol and tobacco products threatens the established vice policies of some of the member states -- most particularly, the high-tax alcohol regime in Sweden and (formerly) in Denmark. It is this loss of control over internal vice policies that I think represents a threat to the long-term stability of both the EU and the WTO.

But more or less the opposite problem (oops -- OK, it's the same problem of vice policies threatening stability...) could lead to an EU break-up, of sorts. Aaland is a Swedish-speaking island in Finland, but it is semi-autonomous. Ferries from Aaland to elsewhere in the EU sell snus! The EU says that snus is illegal except for in Sweden, and Aaland is not in Sweden, but is in the EU. There will be a court case, but Aaland will be represented by Finland -- and Finland isn't really on Aaland's side in this controversy. So Aaland is talking about leaving the EU.

Folks, you heard it at Vice Squad first: this snus flap is the start of something much bigger. (Was this an economist making a prediction? Feel free to ignore that last bit.)

Labels: EU, Finland, snus, Sweden, WTO

 
Obligatory Snus Update
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:48 PM

The smokeless tobacco snus, popular in Sweden (and non-European-Union-member Norway) but banned in the rest of the EU, hopes to see its Swedish popularity increase come June. That's when Sweden's public smoking ban, including bars and restaurants, comes into effect. A Swedish newspaper "noted that so-called "snus fridges" are being installed in many Swedish pubs and restaurants, replacing cigarette machines, with two major restaurant chains apparently ordering the dispensers for their sixty restaurants."

I still tend to think that the legalization of snus throughout the EU would be a good tobacco harm reduction measure. Among EU countries, the lowest lung cancer rate for males is recorded in Sweden.

Labels: EU, snus, Sweden

 
Old Snus News: EU Ban Upheld
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:57 PM

Wouldn't you know it, the European Court of Justice waits until I am away from Chicago to issue its ruling that the EU ban (outside of Sweden) on the smokeless tobacco "snus" can remain in place. So I get the snus news nearly a month late, though to be honest, the mid-December ruling wasn't unexpected. While I believe that snus should be legal and that the EU policy should be liberalised, I generally am wary of using free trade commitments to trump vice policy.

A Swedish researcher commented on the decision in a more timely fashion. Here's an excerpt:

The ban on snus is in stark contrast with the rest of the EU's tobacco policy. Forms of smokeless tobacco that are more harmful than snus are allowed to be sold in the EU. But, as mentioned above, the ban against snus was made before Sweden joined the union in 1995. Thus it seemed as the perfect progressive anti-tobacco policy, banning a product that was not used in the union, but still not antagonizing anyone.

About 300,000 tonnes of tobacco is produced in France, Italy, Spain and Greece taken together. Around 80,000 farmers, mostly in poor regions of Greece and Italy, get about €7,000 per hectare from European taxpayers to grow tobacco. That is 20 times the subsidy paid to grain farmers!

Labels: free trade, snus, Sweden, tobacco

 
Tobacco Harm Reduction?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:40 PM

One of the perceived advantages of snus, the Swedish form of chewing tobacco, is that it is not nearly as damaging to health as is smoking. Evidence for a link between snus and cancer, for instance, has been so limited that since 2001, snus packages in Sweden have not contained the same cancer warning that appears on other tobacco products. But some new research ties snus to cancer:

A study carried out by the World Health Organisation and released [two weeks ago] followed 10,000 Norwegians, of whom two-thirds were snus-lovers. The results show that users of the popular chewing tobacco increase their risk of contracting mouth or pancreatic cancer by 67%.

Vice Squad turns to snus occasionally (along with khat and absinthe), most recently, here.

Labels: snus, tobacco