Big tobacco may be scrambling to grab hold of the e-cigarette market, but there's a little-known 700-year-old tobacco product from Europe that's also seen as having big potential, CNBC recently reported.
Snus (usually described with the anglified pronunciation "snoose") is a tobacco product related to U.S. style dipping tobacco but generally considered cleaner or more civilized by its users. Sold loose in tins or in tiny tea bag-style pouches the product is placed under the upper lip.
The product is available in stores all over the United States and through mail order; see for instance http://www.snusdirect.com/ or google snus online.

While there are U.S. varieties of the product from both R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, a WHO study also quoted in the report concluded that "... among the smokeless tobacco products on the market, products with low levels of chemicals called nitrosamines, such as Swedish snus, are considerably less hazardous than cigarettes."
Swedish Match, whose U.S. sales of snus is 47-50 million cans per year, is working on an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to label its products as having a "modified or lower risk."
The product that lead to many American varieties of snus arrived with the nineteenth century Swedish immigrants. We did a special report on snus, health research and history, a few years ago, read it on issuu.com here: Snus, the bump that satisfies...

Chad Jones, a U.S.-based snus user and blogger for Snubie.com, a website devoted to smokeless tobacco, told CNBC via email that he has witnessed growth in popularity with more retail outlets offering the product in his local area.
"I was looking for a way to quit smoking and discovered snus ... what drew me in was how discreet snus was and the lack of dangerous health risks that other forms of tobacco carry. As a new parent, I also didn't want to expose my daughter to any of the second-hand effects of smoking, and I no longer wanted to subject myself to the effects and risks of cigarettes either," he wrote.
The CNBC report quotes statistics from research firm Euromonitor that suggest the U.S. will be snus's biggest growth area. Between 2013 and 2017 it expects retail volume to grow by 19.7 percent in the U.S., 11.1 percent in Sweden and 15.5 percent in the rest of the world.

Want to find out more about why almost one in five Swedish adult men use snus, check our report Snus, the bump..