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Smokeless Tobacco 



Smokeless tobacco products — snuff and chewing tobacco — 

 are a variety of consumer products which, unlike cigarettes, 

 cigars, pipe tobacco or other smoking tobacco, are not 

 manufactured to be smoked but instead are placed in the mouth and 

 chewed or passively enjoyed. Consumers choose to use smokeless 

 tobacco products for a variety of reasons, particularly where 

 smoking is inconvenient. 



Smokeless tobacco was introduced in Europe early in the 16th 

 century by explorers who found the natives in the Western 

 Hemisphere using tobacco in several ways. Its use quickly grew 

 in popularity throughout Europe and the British Isles. The use 

 of smokeless tobacco has been a tradition in the United States 

 since the 18th century, predating branded cigarettes by over a 

 hundred years. Smokeless tobacco dominated the American tobacco 

 market until the early 20th century when cigarettes and other 

 lighted forms of the leaf began to win wide public acceptance. 

 Today, smokeless tobacco products are consumed throughout the 

 United States, although per capita consvimption of smokeless 

 tobacco in the 1990s is less than 25 percent of what it was at 

 the turn of the century. 



