| Summary: | Background
Marketing
of SLT products through internet is banned in 42 countries. Flavouring of SLT is banned in only in
a handful of countries. There is scant literature on the internet sale of SLT
products and their associated flavours. This
study evaluates global online market of SLT products, the number of websites
selling these products, the type of products and the flavours mentioned in the website.
Methods
The current study was conducted in June-July 2017;
online search was done for the sites selling SLT products through Google
browser. First 20 pages of the Google results were visited for each country
using the key words "chewing tobacco", "snuff", "snus", "smokeless tobacco" and
"oral tobacco" in combination with general terms "tobacco sale", "online sale"
etc. Data was obtained for the number and type of product sold and flavours
mentioned for each product.
Results
Our search showed that there is a wide spread internet sale of SLT
products notably in India, UK, USA and Sweden. There is lack of
policy in the high SLT burden countries like India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan
and China. Policy on ban of flavoured SLT products is there in only Australia,
Brazil, Colombia, Republic of Korea and Sri Lanka. Online sale of flavoured SLT
product sale was extensive in India, Thailand, USA and UK. Most commonly used
flavours were sweet, spice, flower, fruit, alcohol flavours and various non-specific
flavours.
Conclusions
There is a wide spread sale of SLT products online. This
enables the individuals to buy the products around the globe. The need of the
hour is to formulate a policy to reduce the sale of online SLT products.
|
|---|