Marketing of Smokeless Tobacco (SLT) products through internet among the WHO FCTC ratified countries

Background Marketing of SLT products through internet is banned in 42 countries. Flavouring of SLT is banned in only in a handful of countries. There is scant literature on the internet sale of SLT products and their associated flavours. This study evaluates global online market of SLT products, the number of websites selling these products, the type of products and the flavours mentioned in the website. Methods The current study was conducted in June-July 2017; online search was done for the sites selling SLT products through Google browser. First 20 pages of the Google results were visited for each country using the key words "chewing tobacco", "snuff", "snus", "smokeless tobacco" and "oral tobacco" in combination with general terms "tobacco sale",…