Smokeless Tobacco Products

Book excerpt: Smokeless Tobacco Products: Characteristics, Usage, Health Effects, and Regulatory Implications, a title in the Emerging Issues in Analytical Chemistry series, presents an overview of research on the second most dangerous tobacco product. This book presents findings on public health risks emanating from the complex interaction between smokeless tobacco products and their users. It covers the key components of assessment and provides insight into scientific and public health considerations. The book does not take a simplistic condemnatory position, but rather conceptualizes tobacco use in terms of graduated public health danger and harm reduction. The book begins by introducing smokeless tobacco, its history of use, marketing, and implications for public health. It then continues with coverage of epidemiology, pathology and clinical implications, addiction, and treatment, and includes laboratory studies of human use. The following section explains the chemistry, biochemical mechanisms of carcinogenesis, and role of plant cultivation and manufacturing in toxicity. Finally, the book concludes by addressing regulatory considerations, the scientific basis of regulations, and the role of these products in harm reduction for smokers. This is the first resource of its kind to cover these topics together and in language appropriate to both specialists in the research community and informed persons responsible for legislative, funding, and public health matters in the community at large. - Brings attention to smokeless tobacco product use and its association with addiction and disease - Considers smokeless tobacco use historically and currently, as well as its place in a future harm-reduction conceptualization of tobacco - Written by a distinguished, internationally recognized group of tobacco researchers from academia, independent research organizations, and the federal government with expertise in the many and various disciplines covered