Some of the newer smokeless products that tobacco companies are betting on may not be as good at helping smokers quit as the industry hopes, a new federally funded study by Virginia Commonwealth University shows. And that means they may not be the kind of reduced-harm product that is the industry’s latest hope, now that tobacco is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Winning FDA designation as a “potential reduced-exposure product” could be worth billions of dollars, and a key element of that could be whether an item keeps smokers from lighting up.

Swedish Match AB, the parent company of Chesterfield County-based Swedish Match North America, is joining with cigarette maker Philip Morris International to sell a smokeless tobacco product called snus. The companies announced yesterday that they are forming a joint venture based in Sweden to sell snus in markets outside of Scandinavia and the U.S.