Over the past decade, tobacco sales in the United States have dropped by about 30%, leading many people to believe the number of tobacco users has dropped, too. Many of these ex-smokers haven’t given up the tobacco habit entirely, though. Instead, many of them have switched to smokeless tobacco products and small cigars.

Sales of small cigars and smokeless tobacco products such as chewing tobacco, snuff, and roll-your-own products have surged over the same span of time cigarette sales were dropping. A Harvard-based team of researchers says this reversal of sales trends is, in large part, due to the high rate by which cigarettes are taxed. A second reason for the surge in non-cigarette tobacco products is that anti-tobacco campaigns focus heavily on cigarettes while virtually ignoring other tobacco-based products.

Professor Greg Connolly and Hillel Alpert, both with the Harvard School of Public Health, recently concluded the first-ever study designed to compare side-by-side sales of cigarettes and other tobacco-based products. They’ve published their findings in the June 11 issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

According to the data examined by the Harvard research team, overall tobacco sales have dropped 2% each year since 1998, which indicates to many industry analysts that people are smoking less each year. Cigarette sales did drop over that same period of time, by 18% from 2000 to 2007. But the sale of other tobacco-based products increased by such a degree as to offset the theoretically reduced tobacco consumption indicated in the 2% overall drop in tobacco sales.

Cigarette companies are notorious for changing advertising strategies quickly and just enough to avoid censure. As smokeless tobacco products are gaining in popularity, several major tobacco companies have begun manufacturing snuff and snuff-based products or they’ve bought up companies already well established in this line of tobacco-based products.

Due to the high tax rate of cigarettes, consumers using other tobacco-based products spend about 55% the amount smokers do to support their habits. Taxes for smokeless forms of tobacco and small cigars are generally 5% to 10% the tax rate of cigarettes.

Referring to the reduced tax rate for smokeless tobacco products and the lack of coverage of them in anti-tobacco campaigns, Connolly says the “loophole for death” must be closed. He urges all consumers to understand that tobacco kills, regardless of the form in which it is ingested.

Data from the National Cancer Institute indicates there are approximately 438,000 tobacco-related deaths in the US each year. The American Heart Association says almost 24% of all American men (or 25.9 million of them) smoke cigarettes while more than 18% (20.7 million) of the nation’s women are smokers.

Source: Harvard School of Public Health