By ALAN BAVLEY

Ever find yourself lounging in your nonsmoking hotel room when you get the urge to light up?

Or how about those times when you’ve been in that rooftop pool overlooking the Hollywood Hills, where it’s hard to keep your cigarettes lit?

According to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., those are perfect occasions to break out the Camel Snus, a new tobacco product being test-marketed in Kansas City.

According to health advocates, snus is an example of how the tobacco industry is using its marketing expertise to devise new ways to hook young people on a dangerous addiction.

Snus — it rhymes with “juice” — is Swedish for “snuff.” In Sweden, snusing is more popular than smoking.

In the U.S., snus represents the latest stage in the evolution of smokeless tobacco from the chaws that trigger floods of brown saliva into something more hygienic that can be used in polite company.

Camel Snus comes in inch-long pouches, like tiny teabags, that users stuff between their upper lip and gum. According to R.J. Reynolds, no spitting is required.

Philip Morris USA also has started marketing snus under its Marlboro brand.

This interest in snus reflects the shifting conditions of the tobacco market. Cigarette sales have been on a decades-long slide. Chewing tobacco is out of favor. But sales of “moist snuff” like Copenhagen or Skoal are booming. In the world of tobacco products, snus is most similar to moist snuff.

Camel Snus is being test-marketed in eight cities. It was advertised recently in the pages of The Kansas City Star and in a stylish “Abridged Guide to Snusing” supplement stuffed into copies of the Pitch.

R.J. Reynolds said it was aiming snus strictly at adults who were current smokeless tobacco users or smokers who faced situations where smoking was unwelcome. The Abridged Guide suggested using snus in a nonsmoking hotel room, in that rooftop pool in California or “on a ski lift in Aspen.”

“There are times and places where you can’t smoke, but as a smoker you still want to enjoy tobacco pleasure,” said company spokesman David Howard. “This product allows you to enjoy tobacco pleasure without bothering others.”

But to health experts, that tobacco pleasure is nothing more than the satisfaction of a nicotine craving.

“Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs on the market. On a weight basis, it’s more addictive than heroin or cocaine,” said Edward Ellerbeck, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Ellerbeck is concerned that snus will find its way into the hands and mouths of adolescents, an age group that consumes significant quantities of other smokeless tobacco products. Data suggest that adolescents who use smokeless tobacco are more likely to become cigarette smokers, he said.

“If snus is used as an alternative for smokers who can’t quit, I’d have no problem with it,” Ellerbeck said. “But the whole tobacco industry has had a history of making its products more acceptable to new adopters. Does the benefit of a few smokers changing to snus overweigh the possibility of a new generation of tobacco users?”

Whether it’s safer to snus than to smoke is open to debate.

Camel Snus carries such warnings as, “This product may cause gum disease and tooth loss.” And R.J. Reynolds makes no claims that it is safer than cigarettes, company spokesman Howard said.