How is smokeless tobacco harmful

Factsheet: Smokeless Tobacco: Products and Marketing. July Federal Trade Commission. Smokeless Tobacco Report for ; Issued March National Center for Health Statistics. National Health Interview Survey, National Youth Tobacco Survey, This November your donation goes even further to improve lung health and defeat lung cancer.

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Our service is free and we are here to help you. Many regular smokeless tobacco users have receding or swollen gums, tooth decay and cavities from the high sugar content in the tobacco , scratching and wearing down abrasion of teeth, and bone loss around the teeth.

The surface of the tooth root may be exposed where gums have shrunken. All of these can cause teeth to loosen and fall out. Smokeless tobacco can lead to nicotine poisoning and even death in children who mistake it for candy. All smokeless tobacco contains nicotine, which can lead to addiction. In teens, using nicotine can also harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood, and impulse control. It may also increase the risk for future addiction to other drugs.

Dissolvable tobacco is of special concern because at this time little is known about the health effects of these products. Because they are so tempting, they can easily poison children and pets. Manufacturers often imply or even claim that spit or smokeless tobacco can help people quit smoking.

A lot of people believe and try this. But no smokeless tobacco product has been proven to help people quit smoking. Unlike US Food and Drug Administration FDA -approved standard treatments that have been proven to work such as nicotine replacement therapy NRT and certain drugs , oral tobacco products have not been tested thoroughly to see if they can help a person stop smoking.

And research to date has not shown that they really help a person quit. Even if using smokeless tobacco helps some people give up smoking, it still can cause cancer and other health problems, so it's not a safe alternative. But users also can get cancer in the stomach, the throat, and the bladder because the chemicals from the tobacco get into their digestive systems through their spit. In the most severe cases, problems caused by smokeless tobacco can lead to permanent disfigurement, such as the loss of teeth and even bones in the face.

Smokeless tobacco also causes bad breath, yellowish-brown stains on the teeth, and mouth sores in most users. Quitting is hard, and using smokeless tobacco while trying to quit is common. But don't give up. Your chances of quitting get better each time you try! Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. What Is Smokeless Tobacco? Smokeless tobacco comes as either snuff or chewing tobacco: Snuff is finer-grain tobacco that sometimes comes in pouches that look like teabags.