
“We don’t smoke, and we don’t chew,” begins a wise old ditty. Smoking and chewing tobacco are unhealthy habits, but they can be especially damaging to your oral health. And of the two, to many people’s surprise, chewing may be the more harmful choice.
Chewing tobacco, or smokeless tobacco – or sometimes called “snuff” – generally contains all the dangerous chemicals found in smoking tobacco and can cause the same problems – and worse ones. Three to four times more nicotine is absorbed from smokeless tobacco than from cigarettes and, because it’s swallowed, the nicotine remains longer in the blood stream.
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