Does anyone know why moist snuff (here in the USA usually called dip, as seen in brands like Skoal or Copenhagen) is outlawed in the European Union countries, all except for Sweden?
As anyone who has ever traveled in the EU can attest, tobacco use is usually much more widely practiced than in most areas of the USA, in the form of cigarettes, cigars and pipes, yet apparently moist snuff is a no-no.
Most EU countries have a very relaxed attitude towards things like alcohol use, so-called “soft-drug” use, prostitution, and tobacco use in general, (though I know that indoor smoking bans are now widespread in Europe) so what is the reasoning behind the ban on moist snuff?
Does it have to do with spitting and the perception of disease that could possibly be spread by tobacco spit all over the walkways?
Finally, does Sweden have a special love of dip that other countries never developed?
(If it matters, I don’t use tobacco in any form, so this is all just strictly idle curiosity on my part)
Sweden and Denmark have a long history of using dip; those countries are actually where it originated. Copenhagen, obviously, is one of the most popular brands, and Skoal is a Swedish word and the company, I think, originated there. “Snus” is also a Swedish tradition.
Apparently, from what I can tell from reading Wikipedia, dried, powered snuff, which I gather is usually inhaled thru the nose (like cocaine I suppose) IS legal throughout the EU; It’s only the moist snuff/dip that is banned.
I guess that’s what made me think it has to do with spitting, although I am not sure if most dip users actually spit or if they just swallow the tobacco juices for greater nicotine effect.
According to British American Tobacco’s “EU Social Report,”
According to the Wikipedia article on dipping tobacco, it was more due to low usage in the region and studies at the time which indicated a “strong association cancer.” They don’t indicate which studies those might be, nor do they offer citations.
And as an American who loves snus, once when I ran out and decided to go and pick up some Skoal to quench the craving, I can tell you, that they are not substitutes. I thought I was going to puke the only time I tried Skoal. (No doubt due to the fact that Scandinavian snus does not require spitting out of juices, whereas American-style smokeless tobacco does.)
At the time of the ban it was said that it contains little pieces of glass to break the skin so the nicotine can reach the blood circulation. It was considered bad to have glass pieces in your mouth. Not sure it was the motivation of the ban thou.
As others have said, the brands you mention are American. Additionally there is very, very little usage of dip or snus in Denmark (I don’t know anyone who uses; I wouldn’t even know where to buy it).
Snus is a Swedish thing, though it is slowly gaining popularity here as smoking is banned in more and more places.
Yes, and in Norway and the Swedish speaking parts of Finland.
As someone has already commented: total and utter bulldust. Those are salt crystals.
An interesting thing is that there is a large underground production of wet snus within the EU as it is also used in the Maghreb area in Africa and there is a large population of immigrants from there in Western Europe. I remember when Britain banned it as a populist thing to do: “Let’s ban something that very few people use anyway and look better in the eyes of health fascists elsewhere”. They were soon pressed to lift the ban by American tobacco companies who wanted to export it, but I think this is what compelled the EU ban.
Discussion in Sweden regarding the carcinogenic nature of Snus seems to be like similar discussion of smoking in the fifties - you can get wildly different views depending on who you speak to or what you read. What I can say though is that Snus users often use it a lot and so if it is bad for them then things could be nasty.
My opinion on the ban in the rest of the EU is that because it is addictive and can easily be taken all day, every day without anyone else even noticing (apart from a slightly bulging upper lip). I’ve only ever had it once (the delightfully named Göteborgs Rapé) and just remember it being foul. I can’t remember if there is any sort of mild nicotine hit.
I wondered at first what exactly you were talking about because tobacco snorted is certainly allowed, it’s big part of tradition in Bavaria. But the wikipedia article on dip made things clearer: it’s put into the mouth, but different from chewing tobacco.
If you’d ask me, I’d also say that despite cigs, cigars* and pipes being popular, along with snuff, chewing tobacco just was not very common or widespread, and “dip” simply unknown. (Chewing tobacco would most be associated with sailors than with normal people today, or with cowboys in Westerns spitting everywhere).
With no big lobby, forbidding it is no big deal.
*Because we don’t follow US laws, we can buy Cuban cigars legally in every price class. Still it’s mostly associated with fat old rich men like Ludwig Erhardt to smoke a cigar, not modern young people who either smoke cigs. or don’t smoke at all.
As others have noted above - EU ban on snus (and I guess dip, although that is virtually unheard of here in Norway and Sweden, where we are all (well, not all, but a good chunk of the population) using snus all the time), is related to possible health concerns (for which nothing conclusive either way has been established), the higher addictiveness of snus (you really get hooked on this stuff) and that it is easier for young’uns to start using snus (portion snus can easily be used unnoticed by the teacher or meddling parents, no need to hide away on school grounds to puff on a cigarette).
Thankfully, Norway and Sweden had the traditions established, so we are exempt. Also, EU countries doesn’t ban snus, merely sale, so we can bring with us a plentyfull cache of the stuff whenever abroad, unless we’re traveling to Iceland, where our wicked viking cousins has banned the stuff so completely, that it is actually confiscated and fined in customs - the main reason I haven’t visited Iceland
Well, as noted, wiki says that only sale, not consumption, is forbidden. So there’s no criminalization.
Second, my guess is that it’s a rare practice and that people usually get addicted to tobacco with cigs because of peer pressure (And ads). I wonder how many people on the street have heard of this stuff (unlike snuff for the nose or chewing tobacco for sailors) and that it’s banned, so they won’t consider it.
Making something uncool, like cig. smoking (in the X-files, the bad guy was CSM) is a good way to make an activity go away. Forbidding it helps that because fewer opportunities arrive.
But tell me, how’s that war on drugs in the US going? Just swimmingly, right?
A bit drifting from the topic, but snus is making inroads in the US, too. Both Camel and Marlboro have their own (IMHO, terrible) versions of portion snus. (So far as I know, they don’t offer loose snus–my preference.) They don’t seem to be popular from what I can tell, and I’m the only person I know of that buys it (very occasionally, when I run out of the “good stuff” and don’t have time to run down to the tobacco shop or mail order.) I believe the Camel portion snus is made in Sweden, but it just doesn’t taste like a good Göteborgs Rapé, Ettan, or Röda Lacket. It’s just sweeter, less tobacco-tasting, has less of a nicotine kick, and has this overwhelming weird odor to it. It’s just not very good, but that could be because my only experience with smokeless tobacco is purely via snus. People who are more used to dip may prefer the American formulations, for all I know.
A related question (I have a 18th century chinese snuff bottle).
Did people in the past really inhale snuff (so as to elicit a sneeze)? Why was this popular? I don’t enjoy sneezing-or did they get a nicotine rush from absorbing it through the nose?
I’m confused. I thought snuff, by definition, is inhaled. And it’s not people in the past who use it. It’s still used, although I really haven’t seen it in the US, just in Germany and perhaps the UK.
I see people inhaling it, even today (quite uncommon,though). On the other hand, I never seen anybody sneezing, except in cartoons or such thing. So I’m not sure if there was a time when people inhaled it in such a way that they would sneeze, and if so, why they’d do that.
By the way, I didn’t know that “dip” was banned in the EU. In fact I didn’t even know that such a thing existed in the first place. It had to be so rare that banning it was of no consequence here in France.
Yes, snuff was and is popular. As I mentioned, it’s part of traditional Bavarian folklore. There are even competitions on how much snuff you can snuff up your nose in a given time (though any competition runs contrary to the real, traditional, easy-going Bavarian spirit).
No, it’s not done to sneeze; if you sneeze, you’re not a “real” man (like the ads for fishermen’s friend :))
You don’t get a nicotine “rush”, but it is tobacco with nicotine. You can do it without going outside to light up a cig. or bother people with smoke.
Why do people like it? Well, why do people like dip? Because, that’s why.
