Battle lines drawn over Sweden's snus tobacco

Sweden is poised to become Europe's first smoke-free country largely thanks to the popularity of snus, a kind of moist snuff which is placed under the upper lip. But some are worried the tobacco industry is too good. Used by one in seven Swedes, snus has helped slash the number of smokers from 15 percent of the population in 2005 to 5.2 percent last year, a record low in Europe.
Snus has been banned in the European Union since 1992. But Sweden negotiated an exemption when it joined the bloc three years later. The Swedish Match factory in the Gothenburg sold 277 million boxes of snus in Sweden and Norway in 2021. There are two types, traditional brown snus, which contains tobacco, and white snus, which is made of synthetic nicotine and often flavored.