Smokeless tobacco has over 3,000 chemicals, including 28 that can cause cancer.
Using smokeless tobacco can lead to:
- oral cancer (cancer of the mouth – lip, tongue and cheek, floor and roof of the mouth)
- esophageal cancer
- pancreatic cancer
Smokeless tobacco comes in 2 forms:
- Chewing tobacco is a leafy tobacco sold in pouches.
- Snuff is finely ground tobacco that is either moist or dry. Moist snuff is taken orally. It’s rolled in a pellet and placed between your gums and cheek inside your mouth. Dry snuff is sniffed through the nose.
Smokeless tobacco is highly addictive because it contains nicotine. It can lead to smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products. In fact, some studies suggest that teens who use smokeless tobacco are more likely to smoke in the future than those who don’t.
Although some people think cigar smoking is less harmful to their health than smoking cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos are simply rolls of tobacco wrapped in tobacco leaf paper. They come in different sizes but usually contain several times as much tobacco as cigarettes do.
Cigars
Smoking cigars increases your risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx, lung, esophagus and pancreas.
Other types of rolled tobacco (such as bidis and kreteks) are flavoured or mixed with other things. Although the flavouring may disguise the tobacco taste, it doesn’t make them less harmful.
Bidis
Popular in Indian and other Southeast Asian cultures, bidis are small cigarette-like products that are usually flavoured. Studies have linked bidi smoking with an increased risk of developing oral, lung, stomach and esophageal cancer.
Kreteks
Kreteks are clove-flavoured cigarettes. Kreteks have not been studied as much as regular cigarettes – but similar to cigarette smoking, kretek smoking has been shown to damage the lungs.
Pipes and water pipes
Some people believe that using a pipe to smoke tobacco filters the smoke and makes it less harmful. But pipe tobacco contains many of the same chemicals as cigarette smoke.
Smoking a pipe increases the risk of developing:
- oral cancer
- lung cancer
- esophageal cancer
Pipe smokers are also at a higher risk for cancer of the lip if they suck on the pipe stem when not smoking.
Smoking a pipe can also hurt others around you. The second-hand smoke is equal to the smoke from several cigarettes due to the amount of tobacco usually put into a pipe.
In recent years, more young adults have been using water pipes (also known as hookahs). In a water pipe, tobacco is heated and the smoke is passed through water before it’s inhaled through a tube. The water doesn’t really reduce the cancer-causing substances in the smoke. And users of water pipes usually inhale larger amounts of smoke than cigarette smokers do.
Smoking a water pipe can be addictive and may increase your risk of cancer.