Imperial Tobacco’s new smokeless product provokes debates among the industry’s adversaries.

Snus seems to be the major thing to come out of Sweden after the flat-pack house. The pasteurized humid snuff, sold in simple powder or in sachets, is the significant popular tobacco product in Sweden. Just a small quantity of people knew about it in Canada until Benjamin Kemball, president of Imperial Tobacco Canada, demonstrated a sachet of the stuff at a lecture to the Canadian Club of Montreal recently. Snus excretes nicotine directly into the bloodstream, and can contain there for over an hour.

The Canadian Club invited Kemball to unveil Imperial Tobacco’s new plan on “social responsibility.” He said the company is going to fund “youth smoking prevention” programs, help diminish illegal tobacco sales and boost with less harmful tobacco products.

Francois Damphousse, the Quebec director of the Non-Smokers Rights Association, whose group rejected Imperial Tobacco’s invitation for a meeting, says that it is pure PR to attorn them. Indicating the “youth smoking prevention” program, which prevents retailers from selling tobacco to youth, he informs that in the past, tobacco companies used the program to show their serious attitude to the issue.

Canadians should know about the probable benefits of snus. It’s less perilous than cigs, but it still imposes a risk. It’s the lesser of two evils.

The evidence is testifying that snus is far less harmful than cigarettes. Lancet, a British medical journal, published a study recently that reported the same levels of lung and oral cancers as non-smokers did. Snus users were more predisposed to pancreatic cancer than non-smokers, however less than smokers were. Snus is more popular than cigarettes and tobacco in Sweden, where the smoking population is the smallest in the world.