Dental News - Association between snus use, smoking and alcohol consumption investigated

Dental Tribune International

Fri. 30. October 2015

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OULU, Finland: Although the relationship between the use of snus and lifestyle-related habits has not been widely investigated yet, some studies have suggested that smokeless tobacco use could be a gateway to cigarette smoking. Aiming to shed light on the issue, researchers from the University of Oulu have now investigated the association between snus use and habits and attitudes regarding cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption among Finnish adolescents.

The study was conducted as part the country’s National School Health Promotion Study, a research programme that was established in 2000 in order to monitor the health and well-being of Finnish adolescents. Data about snus use, habits and attitudes concerning smoking and alcohol consumption, as well as age, sex, school type and parents' educational and smoking background, was collected via a questionnaire. Altogether, 183,226 Finns between the ages of 13 and 19 participated in the survey.

More than two-thirds of the adolescents held positive attitudes towards smoking and alcohol, at 71 per cent and 67 per cent, respectively. Of the young Finns surveyed, 18 per cent had used snus in the past. Overall, snus use was more common among boys than girls. As for smoking, the study showed that 19 per cent of the participants smoked daily and 15 per cent were occasional smokers. Regarding alcohol, 11 per cent reported consumption of alcohol weekly and 57 per cent monthly or less frequently.

The analyses showed that adolescents’ current snus use was strongly related to their smoking habits and attitudes towards smoking. Moreover, current snus users tended to be current smokers and reported positive attitudes towards smoking. The latter finding proved to be consistent across all school types and for both sexes.

Other factors that were significantly associated with adolescents' current snus use in the study were male sex, weekly consumption of alcohol and higher parental education, whereas parental smoking did not. According to the researchers, the results suggest that snus use among adolescents may signal an accumulation of other lifestyle-related risk behaviours, such as current or past smoking and alcohol consumption, as well as a positive attitude towards smoking. Thus, co-existing health-related risk factors, as well as sex and educational background, should be taken into account in order to target preventive messages more effectively through health promotion activities, they concluded.

The use of a diversity of non-conventional tobacco products has become commonplace and even increased in many countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Finland, in recent decades. In Finland, snus use among the youth is increasing despite an EU ban on the sale of snus since Finland joined the EU in 1995. As recently reported by Helsinki Times, personal imports of snus have increased by 65 per cent since 2008. According to statistics released by the Finnish tobacco industry and the National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health, Finnish residents brought a total of 600 million cigarettes and 10 million tins of snus into the country over the past 12 months.

Although smokeless tobacco such as snus has been found to be less harmful then cigarettes, it can cause mouth sores and dental cavities and generally raises the risk of several diseases, including oral cancer, pancreatic cancer and oesophageal cancer.

The study, titled “Use of snus, its association with smoking and alcohol consumption, and related attitudes among adolescents: The Finnish National School Health Promotion Study”, was published on 24 October in the Tobacco Induced Diseases journal.

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