• Wall Street Journal, Friday, March 26, 2010 10:40 AM

As cigarette sales plummet, Reynolds American is turning to an array of smokeless alternatives -- including strips, lozenges and snuff -- to deliver nicotine to consumers even as public-health professionals intensify the debate about how oral forms of tobacco should be regulated, David Kesmodel reports.

CEO Susan Ivey is herself partial to dissolvable smokeless-tobacco strips, but anti-tobacco advocates say that adolescents are also drawn to the products, which come in brightly colored, easily concealed packages. The Food and Drug Administration has asked Reynolds to provide its research into how the dissolvable products are used and perceived by people 25 and younger.

Ivey says the products "can drive our sustainability into the future," and the company maintains that it is cooperating with the FDA and that its products are marketed for adults and sealed in child-proof packaging. She says she doesn't think the products "are marketed in any way other than to give [consumers] choice." Reynolds has some allies among traditional critics.

"It's a disservice to public health if we keep products off the shelf that are [safer] than cigarettes," says Scott Ballin, who is the former legislative counsel for the American Heart Association. "To me, if we can come up with a better mousetrap, we should be considering those options."

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