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The European Commission took Denmark to court on Thursday for allowing the sale of snus, despite a European Union sales ban on the moist oral snuff. Sweden, a snus producer, is currently the only country in the 28-member bloc permitted to sell the powder tobacco, a privilege granted when it joined the club in the 1990s. …

New 'snus' taking on smoking ban Monday, March 17, 2008 3:07 AM By James Nash THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH It might have a funny-sounding name, but snus is no laughing matter to activists who led the 2006 campaign to ban smoking from public places across Ohio. Snus, a nugget of tobacco wrapped in a porous tissue, will be under the lips of thousands of people in central Ohio this year if product launches by three tobacco companies are successful. The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. started selling Camel Snus in central Ohio in July. Lorillard Tobacco Co. introduced its lower-cost Triumph brand...

In the decade since they voted to join the European Union the islanders of the Aland archipelago in the Baltic Sea have been outvoted and overruled by Brussels, time and again.Now Aland, a unique, autonomous region of Finland, is about to teach Brussels a lesson in democracy it may never forget. Shopkeeper Alf-Erik, in Aland, a revolt by islanders has been brewing for some time Thanks to a quirk of early 20th-century history, Aland's 26,000 people are essentially sovereign co-rulers of their home nation of Finland. As such, they can veto any international treaty that Finland wants to enter, including...

For decades, public health advocates have championed harm reduction for people who cannot stop taking health risks — or do not want to. Needle exchange is a classic example. Intravenous drug users get clean needles because, the reasoning goes, contracting and spreading AIDS is worse than making heroin use a little easier. But harm reduction for hard-core smokers is another matter. At issue is a form of smokeless tobacco, a popular Swedish product called snus (rhymes with loose) that satisfies smokers' nicotine addiction with negligible health risks of its own. But to many foes of smoking, it is not a...

COMMENTARY For decades, public health advocates have championed harm reduction for people who cannot stop taking health risks — or do not want to. Needle exchange is a classic example. Intravenous drug users get clean needles because, the reasoning goes, contracting and spreading AIDS is worse than making heroin use a little easier. But harm reduction for hard-core smokers is another matter. At issue is a form of smokeless tobacco, a popular Swedish product called snus (rhymes with loose) that satisfies smokers' nicotine addiction with negligible health risks of its own. But to many foes of smoking, it is not...

<p>GOTEBORG, Sweden - At a waterfront factory soaked with the acrid smell of tobacco, half the blue-clad workers show an odd facial deformity: Their upper lips look swollen.</p> <p>It's a telltale sign they are sampling some of the 20 tons of smokeless tobacco being produced here daily.</p>

Lying in the name of public health A recent study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the most popular brands of smokeless tobacco in this country are the ones with the highest levels of readily absorbed nicotine. For the researchers, the finding was an opportunity to once again mislead the public about the hazards of oral snuff. "Consumers need to know that smokeless tobacco products...are not safe alternatives to smoking," said co-author Patricia Richter of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. "The amount of nicotine absorbed per dose from using smokeless tobacco...