The chief executive of Sweden’s leading snus producer Swedish Match has called for a public investigation into the health impact of snus in an opinion piece published on the website of Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT. 

In the article Lars Dahlgren invites politicians in Sweden’s government and the Swedish Public Health Agency to look again at snus, arguing that there are many misconceptions about the product and its contents.

“Long before we stopped selling cigarettes, almost two decades ago, we began to greatly reduce the unwanted substances in snus,” he wrote. “This includes substances that are found in virtually all cultivated crops and naturally found in the soil and then taken up by plants.

“Just 100 grams of grilled meat contains as much benz (a) pyrene as 18 snus packages.”

Read the article (in Swedish) here.