MAHONING VALLEY Area smokers put product to the test

The company said it chose Youngstown for the test marketing because it wanted to reach 'mainstream America.'
THE VINDICATOR
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A Connecticut tobacco company has a solution for smokers who don't like heading outside for a cigarette, and it's trying the product out in the Mahoning Valley.
U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. chose Youngstown and Topeka, Kan., to test market its new product, called REVEL, designed to give smokers a nicotine boost when they can't light up.
The manufacturer is marketing REVEL as a discreet way for smokers to get what it calls "full tobacco satisfaction" where smoking is banned -- at work, on an airplane, at a shopping mall.
"As time goes on, there are more and more restrictions on smoking," said company spokesman Michael Bazinet. "It's a national phenomenon, and it figured strongly in our planning and our advertising."
U.S. Smokeless said it chose Youngstown and Topeka because they represent "mainstream America."
Reaction: Some local health officials are skeptical about the choice, however.
The Mahoning Valley already has a higher-than-average number of tobacco users, and health officials say they'd rather see area smokers get help quitting, not a product that strengthens their nicotine addiction.
REVEL comes in half-inch long, paper packets of tobacco and mint flavoring that a smoker can place anywhere in the mouth for a smokeless, cigarette-sized dose of nicotine. The flavor lasts about 20 minutes.
The product comes in packs of 20 in a plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and its price also is comparable to a pack of brand name cigarettes.
U.S. Smokeless Tobacco is a leading manufacturer of snuff -- the company says its two biggest brands, Copenhagen and Skoal, have average sales of $1 billion a year each.
But industry reports on REVEL say it differs from those big-sellers in two ways: There's little or no tobacco flavor and the company says users don't feel the need to spit, as snuff users generally do.
The paper packet material is approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration and is designed to stay intact in the mouth so that the tobacco contents do not fall out.
Topeka, east of Kansas City, has a population of about 124,000; Youngstown has 82,757, but the Youngstown-Warren metropolitan area has 589,236 people, says the Ohio Department of Development.
U.S. Smokeless Tobacco already has strong distribution and sales forces in place in both test market communities, Bazinet said.
Health issues: Bazinet wouldn't discuss whether the product is an improvement, healthwise, over cigarettes. It's a company policy not to discuss health issues, he explained, emphasizing that REVEL is being marketed only to adult smokers.
The company also makes no claims that REVEL has health advantages over its other tobacco products, and Bazinet acknowledged it must use the same health warnings that other tobacco products use on its labels and in its ads.
Jane Warga of the Mahoning County District Board of Health said her office conducted an education campaign for administrators in public and parochial schools countywide when it learned about the test marketing here.
County health officials were particularly concerned about children and teens getting their hands on the product, she explained, because its package could easily be mistaken for a pack of gum or breath mints.
School officials were asked to notify parents so they, too, could be aware.
"It's a tobacco product, pure and simple." she said. "It's just packaged in a different way."
Warga questioned the REVEL maker's reasons for choosing the Youngstown area and suggested Ohio's high tobacco use figures might have been a factor.
Tobacco Free Ohio, a coalition of health organizations, says Ohio's tobacco use ranks fifth in the nation at 26.7 percent, and the Youngstown-Warren tobacco use average is higher yet at 29.8 percent. The national tobacco use average is 22.7, TFO said.
Expert opinion: Dr. William S. Begalla, a Boardman dentist and president of the Mahoning Valley Chapter of the American Cancer Society, said he considers smokeless tobacco like that used in REVEL "the lesser of two evils" compared to cigarettes.
In his 20 years of practice and his years working with the cancer society's oral cancer screening program, he said he's seen "only a couple" cases of cancer that could be attributed to smokeless tobacco products.
"Smokeless tobacco is not as dangerous as smoking, although, of course, I would never recommend either," he said.
Bazinet said REVEL has been well-received by merchants here since the test marketing campaign began in October. "We're in nearly all the stores we had hoped to be in, and that's saying a lot for a new product," he said. "Shelf space and product space is always at a premium."
Bazinet said the test market results are encouraging so far, but it's still too soon to say where the product will go from here. Options include continuing the test market here or extending it to a limited number of other cities, he added.
vinarsky@vindy.com