Published on July 3, 2008
Lucky are Camel smokers of Raleigh County, because they are on the selected test-list of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company of testing Snus variant of its premium brand. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has chosen Raleigh as one of five new test markets for its Camel Snus smokeless products, beginning July 1.
There are also such regions as Greensboro, Austin, Texas, Portland and Oregon in this list, where Camel was already tested. It was a complete sensation. Smokers of all those regions were delighted with the new taste of Camel for more than a year.
New variant of Camel contains less salt and moisture than moist snuff. Camel Snus - pronounced “snooze” - comes in a small pouch that is placed between the lip and gum. The tobacco is pasteurized - not fermented - and it contains less moisture and salt than moist snuff and does not require the consumer to spit, the company said.
In regions where Snus Camel was presented, it was sold in convenience stores and tobacco-retail outlets as far west as the eastern part of Greensboro, spokesman David Howard said yesterday.
According to Rob Dunham, a vice president of new-growth innovation, new Camel will be tested on tobacco market of such cities as Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri.; and Orlando, Florida.
“We’ve determined that Camel Snus is a viable product concept that we will now make available in several thousand retail outlets in the seven test markets,” Dunham said.
It isn’t known which the next regions of testing Camel Snus are, as Dunham said that it wasn’t set a timetable for distributing and marketing Camel Snus nationally.
R. J. Reynolds is already an expert in producing a high quality smokeless tobacco, because Kodiak and Grizzly, national famous moist snuff, belong to Reynolds’ Conwood division.
One reason why R. J. Reynolds enlarges varieties of Camel brand is the smokeless products are more accepted by some anti-smoking groups as a less hazardous way to consume tobacco. These groups sustain smokeless tobacco being less hazardous than that in form of cigarettes:
“Although smokeless tobacco is just as addictive as cigarettes, and should not be used by those who are not addicted to nicotine, cigarettes are about 100 times deadlier than smokeless-tobacco products,” said Bill Godshall, the executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania.
“This is a key reason why Congress should amend the proposed FDA tobacco regulatory legislation. The legislation would require even larger misleading warnings on all smokeless-tobacco products that state: ‘This product is not a safe alternative to cigarettes,’ and would prohibit smokeless-tobacco companies from truthfully claiming smokeless tobacco, which is a less hazardous alternative to cigarettes.”
