Snuff (dry tobacco)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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*This post in no way endorses the use of tobacco products of any kind
For reasons barely known to me I purchased a tin of Ozona President Snuff the other day.
I have used the stuff before in my early youth and well it was OK but I was using other powdered substances at the time and the novelty passed. Same with other tobacco products. I enjoy a dip or a cigar or pipe every now and again but no replacement for a cigarette.

I am almost ten years sober now and I understand addiction a bit.
I think I am entirely addicted. I smoke cigarettes and have smoked for about 20 years or so but I have almost immediately dropped my smoking habit in half right away. (Down from about 11 a day to about 6 or so. I Smoke Blue or Black American Spirits with the filter ripped off. I smoke half the cig then the other half later.)
I lost my tin and though no biggie I will just smoke another cigarette and I was surprised that the cigarette did not satisfy me in a way that it usually does. It was like taking a piece or gum in place of a cigarette except the cig was a substitute for the snuff.

The craving was hard to. Smoking endless cigarettes did not satisfy me. I needed snuff. So I got another tin and now I am completely satisfied. I love the burn and the “taste.”

Is this overall a good turn of events. I like it more and it seems less dangerous. I can not find much info on the net regarding the negative health effects of dry snuff. I do know addiction well enough not to trust my own research at this time though.
*This post in no way endorses the use of tobacco products of any kind

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Tangental, but:

Do you snort it? Or is snuff no longer taken nasally? Does that have a “flavor”?

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Doing a search on Google Scholar came back with some results. It seems to cause some problems with the cardiovascular system. If my understanding of the numbers is correct, then this paper is saying that a snuff user will have about half the increase in probability of death as compared to someone who smokes. So it’s half as bad as smoking, but still bad.

Outside of death, it’s also bad for your gums (or presumably your nose, I would imagine), sense of taste, funky looking teeth, and potential for some sort of oral cancer. (Cite) And I would personally guess that you’ll have breath that smells like doodle.

4

Dy Snuff usually refers to the stuff “snorted.”

Although apparently Old Southern Ladies have been known to take dry snuff orally.

I am not talking about Skoal or Copenhagen or other moist products often called dip, chewing tobacco, or snuff or spit snuff…
Yea I am snorting it.

And strangely enough it is more of a flavor than a smell.

This is what I am talking about.

Dry Snuff
Snuff Talk

That report was based on oral tobacco

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Oral or nasal shouldn’t matter much beyond where it causes problems. If the stuff you put in your mouth makes you get cancer in your mouth, it’s probably pretty likely that it will do something similar to your nose/lungs.

And if I recall correctly, the reason why people will snort things (as opposed to eating) is because it enters the blood stream faster and with less of the “good stuff” being filtered, since your nose isn’t set up to handle the same kind of detoxifying that goes into processing things orally. So I would imagine that whatever is bad about smokeless tobacco will only be worse taken nasally in terms of cardiovascular issues.

I’m not a doctor though, so this is speculation based on what I’m recalling.

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Welcome to the world of snuff!

There are very few case reports of cancer caused by nasal snuff. The strongest evidence is a recent Indian study, though even that had some head-scratchery (nasal snuff use was correlated with oral cancer, which makes me think there was some confounding factor going on there). It seems that nasal snuff is the least harmful way of consuming tobacco.

If you like Ozona President, check out Packard’s Club, too. They’re both quite good, but I’m not a huge fan of the German snuffs – they add paraffin to keep moisture, and I always find they tend to drip down the back of my throat. I’ve a soft spot for them, though, since those two varieties were what I was using continuously in the time surrounding my best friend’s wedding (a highly memorable occasion in my life – it was insane), so there’s a strong scent association and whenever I use them I’m immediately taken back to that rather wild and joyous event.

And if you want a change of pace, try picking up some Wilsons SM Blue or McChrystals Original and Genuine. The former is a menthol and eucalyptus snuff, like President, but in the British style, so it’s fluffy without being waxy, and the latter is also a menthol and IMO the greatest snuff ever produced.

Nasal snuff has none of the above problems (except maybe being bad for the nose in the long run). It keeps the nasal passages open and clear, and the worst side effect usually is an occasional sneeze and the need to keep a ready supply of dark handkerchiefs for blowing one’s nose. And every girl I’ve kissed while using nasal snuff has mentioned that they could taste it on me, but none of them have ever complained and one of them quite liked it.

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I don’t know if you work in an office but I think it would be cool to see someone doing lines out in the smoker’s area. I tried some when I was younger. I find snorting things a little awkward.

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I do work in an office, and one huge advantage of snuff is I can do it right at my desk.

Doing lines of snuff would be a bad thing. It should be gently sniffed up the nose, and is dosed in pinches not lines. I don’t know what it would be like to snort a line of the stuff, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.

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I certainly enjoyed the one box of snuff I tried a few years ago. I used it to tide me over on my only ever flight to America. A lot of fun. Though airport security didn’t seem to know what it was, and treated it with great suspicion…

10

Am I the only person who had no idea that tobacco could be snorted? I’ve heard of snuff before, but I thought it was just a type of chewing tobacco, for some reason.

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I’d be worried about your nostrils drying out and cracking/bleeding, more than anything else. My trick, back when I used other powdered substances, was to sniff a little “bump” of water off my finger after I took my last line and before the drip started.

(BTW, is there a nicotine drip? How does it taste?)

Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the same basic idea behind nasal spray. In fact, I’ve heard of people mixing their powdered substances with water in an empty nasal spray bottle and snorting them that way.

You sound like a man who’s never snorted cocaine and felt his entire jaw go numb immediately afterwards.

yBeayf mentioned “fluffy without being waxy”. Is there a noticeable difference in texture among different brands of snuff? Is it on a simple sliding scale from “nasty texture” to “great texture” or are there individual preferences (ie, some people like the fluffy snuffy stuff and some people like the coarse stuff)?

Also, how much would you spend on a tin of snuff, and how long would it last you assuming you’re an occasional (let’s say once daily for simplicity’s sake) user?

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'nother question–do you need a handkerchief? Given that you apparently take much less at a time than you would of other snortable materials, is there a whole bunch of sniffling and sneezing and such?

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Not usually a problem. Some of the menthol snuffs are quite good at causing a runny nose, in fact, and even the driest snuffs just have the effect of opening and clearing the nasal passages while increasing mucus production. It works somewhat like OTC nasal decongestants, except without the rebound effect they have.

There can be, especially with very moist snuffs. It’s not usually considered pleasant, and I find it to cause a burning feeling in the top of my throat. It’s the reason I stay away from most German menthols.

You would be correct. :slight_smile:

There’s a huge range of consistencies. Most British snuffs are fairly middle-of-the-road – finely ground but still moist. German snuffs and schmalzlers tend to be fairly coarse and as I said have paraffin added, so they are very moist, sometimes resembling soft coffee grounds. Fribourg & Treyer and Samuel Gawith still make some rappee-style snuffs, which are coarser yet; they were originally grated rather than ground (hence the name – râpé or rasped) and are the thickest-textured snuffs still made. One of F&T’s offerings, Santo Domingo, is so coarse that it can’t even really be snuffed, but has to be dropped or rubbed into the nose. And on the fine end of the spectrum, most of Gawith Hoggarth’s snuffs tend to powdery, and the Irish Toasts and American-style snuffs are beyond powder and into dust, with the consistency of powdered sugar.

Which you like is all a matter of individual preference. I like the British snuffs the best, but do a lot of rappee-style ones as well. I only rarely do toasts, as they’re a bit too fine for my tastes, and I always seem to wind up getting the tobacco into my throat and causing a coughing fit.

Cost varies from snuff to snuff. www.marscigars.com is probably the largest online American snuff retailer, and a good place to check out prices. A 25g tin of Wilson’s from there runs $2.70; 8.75g of McChrystals O&G is $2.95; and 1 oz. of any of F&T’s offerings is $6.75. A tin of snuff lasts a long time – if you’re doing 5g of snuff per day, you have a ridiculously heavy habit, equivalent to a 3-pack-a-day smoker. I do about 2-3g per day, and I always carry four smashboxes (little plastic snuffboxes) with me, two always being McC O&G and WoS Best SP, and two being randomly chosen that morning, so a tin of snuff lasts me a long time. If you only took one pinch daily, one tin of snuff could last you years.

Not once you’re used to it. A colored handkerchief is still necessary, because when you eventually need to remove some old snuff, or just blow your nose, if it’s white it looks like you ran out of toilet paper.

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Non-anecdotal cite?

I’ll admit to not being able to find any study which specifically singles out nasal snuffing and the health consequences (or lack.) If you’ve found one, I’ll gladly look at it. Minus that, I think you’re forced to go based on whatever the most similar study is, which would be oral. So unless you can think of any mitigating factors that would make it better to put snuff up your nose than down your throat, I don’t see how you can say that it “doesn’t have any problems.” Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But it probably does.

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That nasal snuff (which, mind you, is sniffed up the nose) doesn’t cause gum problems, stained teeth, or bad breath? I admitted that it might be bad for the nose in the long run, but the rest of the ill-effects you mentioned do not apply.

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This all feeds into one of my . . . well not exactly conspiracy theories, but big mistakes we have made. The science behind non-cigarette nicotine delivery methods show that they are all much much safer than smoking. Dip and chew can cause mouth cancer, but the health effects and the overall risks do not approach the ravages of smoking.

Recognizing that there are nicotine addicts now and there always will be it would be better if the public health agencies and the government backed off the warnings and stance that all uses of tobacco are equally bad. If we promoted snuff, dip and chew as safer alternatives to cigarettes, and doing none of the above as the best alternative I think the country would be far healthier as a result. Instead dip canisters contain warnings of mouth cancer and I grew up thinking that all forms of tobacco were basically the same health wise. Nicotine could become a widely used stimulant like caffeine with some health effects, but without the huge death toll of smoking cigarettes.

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Well, technically true I suppose. It sounded like you were dismissing the idea that there would be nasal equivalents–so alright. Ne’ermind.

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I grew up in a rural redneck high school. Most of the guys and some of the girls dipped. They didn’t really want people dipping in class but most tried and a few got in big trouble for spit cups and other nasty things. My claim to fame was that I could take a big pinch of Copenhagen, completely hide it in my jaw, swallow everything while it was in and then swallow all the dip. I seemed to be the only one around that could manage that trick consistently.

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Shagnasty Hey I still do that when I dip.

yBeayf Thanks for the suggestions. I was doing some research for some brands to try. I just made a big order at Mars. The small town I live in has a really small supply and may have got it in on accident. So I stocked up on the O&G and Some W&S;Tom Buck, SP Best, S.M. Blue and Queens Extra Strong. I know the Queens is the same as the Tom Buck I just wanted both.
How do you go about using it in public? Do you hide it? What kind of reactions do you get? I am happy to do it in private, but I am already thinking about the stairs I will get when I am in a public place and need a snuff. I dont really care I was just wondering what to expect.

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Most people don’t even notice me using it. I have a smashbox out of my pocket, a pinch taken, and the smashbox returned in about 5 seconds, and I don’t make a big production out of it, so unless you’re watching me closely for some reason it’s not very obvious. At parties and such I’ll be a bit more conspicuous, since it’s good for a bit of conversation and I’ve even gotten some people switched to using it over cigarettes.