Nicotine cravers thinking of using smokeless tobacco to get their fix better think again.

Although popular opinion says smokeless tobacco – chew or snuff – is a safer alternative to smoking, it is still not safe, said Dorothy Hatsukami, University of Minnesota professor of psychiatry and researcher for the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Research Center.

“Smokeless tobacco has less potential for disease than smoking. There is no combustion, and you reduce your risk for heart disease and lung cancer,” she said. “It’s safer than cigarette smoking, but it is still not safe. It’s not a good substitute for cigarette smoking.”

Hatsukami said through her research, she found a few tobacco companies, Swedish Match and U.S. Smokeless Tobacco, were planning to market chew to smokers.

“We wanted to look at the issue of what the toxicity is,” she said.

Chew, she said, still contains nitrosamines that can cause cancer. Hatsukami said one side effect of prolonged smokeless tobacco use is the risk of many kinds of mouth and throat cancers.

The most popular brands are Copenhagen and Kodiak, she said. According to research on smokeless tobacco from the University of Florida, adolescents and males using smokeless tobacco are more likely to switch to the more dangerous alternative, cigarettes.

Hatsukami said little research has been done on the reasons people use smokeless tobacco.

“We don’t know if smokeless tobacco is good for cessation,” she said. “We don’t know if people will begin using the products dually.”

Brian Studt, senior in industrial technology, has been chewing for approximately a year and a half. Initially trying it because a friend recommended it, he said he usually dips, on average, once a night.

“First, your lip burns,” he said. “Then, it’s like taking a huge drag on a cigarette for, like, a half an hour straight.”

Studt said he doesn’t smoke because he doesn’t like it, and continues to chew because he likes the taste. He said he has heard of the health concerns with both smoking and chewing, and predicts he will quit eventually.

“I guess I could say I’ve been to enough bars that I’d get enough second-hand smoke to get sick anyway,” he said, comparing the health consequences of dipping to smoking.

Michelle Broshar, tobacco prevention specialist at Youth and Shelter Services, conducts a smoking cessation group in Ames. She currently has eight adults in her program from around Story County. She said all the group members smoke only, and she recommends they use nicotine replacement products, going cold turkey or counseling to stop the habit.

“Using chewing tobacco, in my opinion, to stop would be very dangerous,” she said.

Using a combination of approaches to quitting, such as pairing a patch or gum with counseling, is what Broshar recommends. Mostly, she said, her group works to get behind the behavior that triggers a need for nicotine.

“We work on changing the behavior,” she said.

Thielen Student Health Center smoking cessation counselor Amy Cantazaro said she uses the same type of approach.

“Find patterns of when they smoke and get behind the behaviors and stressors,” she said.

Cantazaro and Broshar said they had not come across someone trying to quit using chew. Cantazaro said her program recommends seven weeks on a patch or gum. But, she said, students are usually weary of using nicotine replacement products.

“The biggest [reason] is they don’t seem to want to pay for it,” Cantazaro said.

Overall, Hatsukami said the messages sent into the public about smokeless tobacco are the most important thing.

“You don’t want adolescents thinking, ‘OK that’s a safe product; I want to use that,'” she said. “You have to watch the kinds of messages you are sending.”