Tobacco product alarms health officials

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — They're discreet, flavorful and come in cute tin boxes with names like "frost" and "spice." And the folks who created Joe Camel are hoping Camel Snus will become a hit with tobacco lovers tired of being forced outside for a smoke.

But convincing health officials and smokers like Ethan Flint that they're worth a try may take some work.

Snus — Swedish for tobacco, rhymes with "noose" — is a tiny, tea bag-like pouch of steam-pasteurized, smokeless tobacco to tuck between the cheek and gum. Aromatic to the user and undetectable to anyone else, it promises a hit of nicotine without the messy spitting associated with chewing tobacco. Just swallow the juice.

Popular for decades in Sweden, where it was invented, snus has been banned in every other European Union nation since 2004 over concerns about carcinogens.

But smokeless tobacco is legal in the U.S., where there are two schools of thought: Some researchers suggest the lower risk of lung cancer makes snus an attractive alternative to smoking, while others fear an increase in problems including mouth lesions or pancreatic cancer.