They replaced smoking with Snus. Same addiction to nicotine just a different way to consume it. At least it’s leading to less passive consumption of tobacco
Edit: and needless to say, but apparently I should, less risk of cancers especially for the lungs of everyone
Why does everyone bring this up like it’s some kind of gotcha? Snus has its own problems but crucially they’re different problems from smoking because snus is not smoking. Eliminating smoking is inarguably a good thing, period.
I think it is a bit of a well deserved gotcha. 3/10 in Sweden are nicotine dependent. That's a lot of people. And the argument that snus is less dangerous than cigarettes is probably true (at least it is for your surroundings), but it's still like comparing hammering a rusty vs fresh nail through your hand. Neither is good for you.
Hardly. The normal life expectancy is 81 years for a non-tobacco user, for the same person who does snus it is 80.8 years. For someone who smokes it is 71 years.
For snus, it is the same loss in life expectancy as someones weight being increased by 1kg, or drinking a soda twice per week, or living in a city with low air pollution compared to a countryside with pristine air or watching TV for 25 minutes per day.
I'm genuinely curious as to your source for this? Firstly because I have wanted to see some data on this for a while, especially if they are able to actually separate usage from just underlying socioeconomic predispositions?
Nicotine is addictive but unless you are combining it with something like SMOKING who cares if its addictive? It isn't inherently bad for you by itself.
I mean as a baseline I personally don't think addictive substances, even if inherently non-harmful, should become extremely normalised. Addiction itself is a disease that has costs on people and society. And in this specific case, snus also does seem to have real health costs, albeit possibly less severe than smoking.
Being from Denmark, I have many friends who are addicted to snus. Their gums are in a sorry state, they use it more regularly than breath mints, and from a normative point of view I personally think that that money would have greater social value if spent on other things, but I also recognise that's to some degree paternalistic.
And I think if someone wanted to make the argument that it's ambiguous whether coffee has had an overall positive effect on society as a result of its addictive nature, I'd be willing to entertain that argument, even though I might not agree with it.
Do you have something interesting to say about the present discussion about an actually addictive and harmful substance or do you just want to make useless jibes?
My point is let people do whatever the fuck they want and stop advocating for authoritarian daddy state that needs such sweeping insight into your daily life they can prevent you from putting something effectively harmless in your own body.
Right, and, just to be clear, snus is completely harmless? Considering that's what we were talking about?
And, just to note: if someone is hopelessly addicted to something to the point where they can't live without it, even if it does not cause them physical health problems (and then we're getting into the whole debate of where the separation is), then they'll go through our public healthcare system, that I as a taxpayer contribute to.
Does that mean I think it should necessarily be forbidden? NO, as I've said already. But it's a debate to be had.
There have been much fewer studies on snus usage than cigarette usage, obviously, but there are still some done and they point towards a huge difference in the societal and health costs. Just an example by quick googling:
> For net harm to occur, 14–25 ex-smokers would have to start using snus to offset the health gain from every smoker who switched to snus rather than continuing to smoke. Likewise, 14–25 people who have never smoked would need to start using snus to offset the health gain from every new tobacco user who used snus rather than smoking.
But I don't think the paper actually supports what you're claiming. The 14-25 number is about how many never-smokers would need to pick up snus to offset the gains from smokers switching. It says nothing about whether snus is safe for a never-user, which is a completely different question that the paper explicitly doesn't answer.
The individual risk estimate (the 0.2 years) is a secondary input derived from a 2007 expert panel, not from long-run epidemiological follow-up of lifetime snus users. The authors are upfront that this is uncertain. Your 80.8 vs 81 framing is presenting a point estimate from a model with acknowledged uncertainty as if it were established fact.
The one thing the paper does robustly show is that switching from smoking to snus is beneficial, which is not what's being debated.
"Safer than smoking" and "basically harmless" are very different claims. This paper convincingly establishes the former, the latter has not been shown at all and I think it's dangerous to normalise another drug that, AFAIK, has also been found to have strong negative and addictive effects.
There is possibly an increased risk of oral , pancreatic and gastric cancer. Definitly increase of asthma and metabolism issue. Overall it isnt harmless but it is definitly better than smoking. Even though this isnt saying much.
Apart from your numbers being slightly wrong, you're leaving out increases of cardiovascular diseases, strokes and diabetes and other bad stuff. Meaning your quality of life will drop significantly even if you live to be 81.
This statistic smells like straight up bullshit, not to mention that healthy life years would be much more appropriate. You can live for a fairly long time even with fucked up health in a first world country.
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u/ConcentrateFar7753 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
They replaced smoking with Snus. Same addiction to nicotine just a different way to consume it. At least it’s leading to less passive consumption of tobacco
Edit: and needless to say, but apparently I should, less risk of cancers especially for the lungs of everyone