Rate of Smokeless Tobacco Use Remained Steady From 2005 to 2010

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document the rates of the country's health habits whenever they can gather sufficient data. This week, the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report examined smokeless tobacco use.

According to the MMWR, the CDC found that the use of smokeless tobacco in the U.S. remained steady from 2005 to 2010. They used data from the annual National Health Interview Survey, where they found 2.7% of working adults used smokeless tobacco in 2005 and 3% did in 2010. Although it's good news that the rates did not witness a drastic increase, these numbers are still 10 times higher than national public health policy goals.

The data included over 30,000 adults from 2005 and 2010 in which each respondent answered a questionnaire about their jobs, use of smokeless tobacco products, and use of cigarettes. The smokeless tobacco rates were highest among white males aged between 25 and 44 years (3.9%).

"The lack of reduction in smokeless tobacco use might be attributable to the introduction of novel smokeless tobacco products into the U.S. marketplace (e.g., snus and dissolvable tobacco), as well as increased expenditures on smokeless tobacco marketing in recent years," the authors wrote via this Reuters news article.

Despite cigarettes getting most of the attention in health-related studies as well as various media reports, smokeless tobacco is just as unhealthy and can cause cancers of the oral cavity, esophagus, and pancreas in addition to receding gums, loss of bones around the teeth, and precancerous lesions. Cigarettes obviously deserve most of the attention, as the National Health Interview Survey found that 22.2% of working adults over the age of 18 smoked cigarettes in 2005 and 19.1% did in 2010.

Smokers are also relative in the smokeless tobacco discussion because previous studies have shown that many cigarette smokers switch to smokeless products in hopes of quitting their smoking habit. Many are unaware that such a transition doesn't help you quit, and it's also not a safe alternative.

The authors of the report hope that more workplaces declare a tobacco free environment to discourage such bad habits, which are very costly to the health care system.

You can read more about the research in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report.