As major U.S. tobacco companies roll out smokeless-tobacco products as an alternative to smoking, some experts assert that smokeless tobacco is up to 90 percent less dangerous than smoking, ABC News reported June 21.

Philip Morris USA recently introduced Taboka, pouches of smokeless tobacco meant to be placed between the lips and gums; RJ Reynolds is testing Camel Snus, a take on a powdered form of smokeless tobacco popular in Sweden. Both cost about the same as a pack of cigarettes, and have about the same amount of nicotine as cigarettes.

But health experts said that the smokeless pouches are less efficient at delivering nicotine. "You can't beat a cigarette for nicotine delivery. It's much faster and in a more concentrated form," said Jonathan Foulds, director of the Tobacco Dependence Program. "Cigarettes are like a Ferrari, and the pouch is like a secondhand Ford."

Brad Rodu, an oral pathologist and professor of medicine at the University of Louisville Cancer Center in Kentucky, termed claims that the smokeless products are equally dangerous to smoking "misinformation."

"Mouth cancer risks are decidedly lower for smokeless tobacco than risks for smoking," said Rodu, who advocates smokeless tobacco as a way to help smokers quit.

Foulds agreed that the risk of smokeless tobacco are lower, but faulted the U.S. government for failing to regulate tobacco products. "Part of the problem in the U.S. is that we have almost no control over what the tobacco industry does in terms of how they market these products and what they put in them," he said. "Nobody would even know. The regulatory vacuum in the U.S. is part of the problem."

For Tabitha Engle, executive director of the Tobacco Free Coalition of Oregon, the bottom line is that smokeless tobacco, like smoking, causes cancer and is deadly and addictive.