Event though TV ads of tobacco products were banned a long time ago, tobacco industry still spends more than $10 billion annually to market latest products. And nearly $200 pf that money is spent to market tobacco in Minnesota, said Adam Kintopf, spokesman for ClearWay Minnesota foundation.

Big tobacco still uses traditional marketing strategies, such as giving coupons and gifts to the smokers and sending samples of new products to Military Corps in the Middle East. However, according to Kintopf, tobacco companies us absolutely new strategies to market their innovative products, which even do not look like ordinary tobacco products. These products are named smokeless tobacco and they include snuff, and snus, teabag-like pouches put between gum and lip. “Snus is currently available in all tobacco shops across the nation, including Minnesota,” admitted Molly Moilanen, program manager at ClearWay Minnesota. “Snus is a totally new tobacco product for U.S. consumers, and according to its makers it is spitless and smokeless.”

With the major advertising slogan saying ‘Boldly go anywhere’ snus is marketed as a product which can be consumed anywhere, from restaurants and sport events to classrooms.

ClearWay Minnesota communication also mentioned other smokeless products, currently not selling across Minnesota, but being test-marketed in Portland, Columbus and Ohio. Kintopf stated they look like ordinary toothpicks or breath-freshening candies, and thus can appeal to teenagers. These products contain fine tobacco that is dissolved in the mouth, lasting for up to 15 minutes.

ClearWay Minnesota recently launched a report “Unfiltered: A Revealing Look at Today’s Tobacco Industry,” concerning new tobacco products developed by Big Tobacco over the last couple of years. ClearWay Minnesota is a non-profit organization which deals with smoking cessation and smoking prevention campaigns around Minnesota.

Mrs. Moilanen declared that ClearWay Minnesota is currently trying to convince Minnesota legislators to introduce amendments to current anti-tobacco laws to prevent adolescents from taking up the latest smokeless tobacco products when they would be selling in Minnesota. All smokeless tobacco should be covered by youth access laws, so that adolescents had no opportunity to buy such products. In addition, smokeless products should be regarded as tobacco products by the Minnesota legal definitions, said Moilanen.

Currently, local laws don’t even include dissolvable tobacco, and anti-smoking advocates are willing to amend the legislation to cover smokeless tobacco as well.

As regards other, highly-controversial products, such as electronic cigarettes, devices that deliver nicotine and simulate smoking, the ClearWay Minnesota spokesman said they would try to convince lawmakers to include the e-cigs in The Freedom to Breathe Act, so that users could not use them in enclosed public places.

The 2010 Tobacco Modernization Act, introduced by a coalition of local public health groups would cover all new tobacco products, so that they could not be sold near candies and other sweet treats.

The Act would also ban the sales of electronic cigarettes to adolescents under 18. In addition, Minnesota Department of Revenue would provide methods of taxing new products in the same way as the existing ones.