Was Chewing Tobacco and Snuff allowed in schools a hundred years ago?

I recall my grandmother saying she started snuff when she was 8 or 9. Grandad the same with Chewing Tobacco.

Did early schools have spittoons and allow the pupils to indulge?

I can recall spittoons in the older businesses in my hometown. Hotel lobbys and a pool hall. My junior high school coach always had a chew in his cheek. Student punishment often involved cleaning his spit can or running laps (our choice). We didn’t use chewing tobacco in the 1970’s at school. Flavored Snuff (Skoal) was popular out of school. Our high school had a smoking area and students needed a note from their parents to use it. No spittoons were there.

spittoons weren’t always needed. Grandma carried a small coffee creamer bottle in her purse to spit in. The had a planters nut can lined with paper towels for car trips.

Also old school snuff is not todays snuff. I used Skoal for a few years and enjoyed it. My grandmother’s Levi Garret snuff was nasty. Tried it one time and never again.

I recently started using nasal snuff to get off the cigarettes. Old school snuff is sniffed into the nose. Women, especially southern women, started to use nasal snuff as a dip by sticking something like a moist hickory twig into the snuff, and applying it inside the cheek. The twig would pick up nicotine and flavor, and they would have that in their mouth as a habit.

I’ve heard it said snuff was a victim of the American rejection of all things British; women started dipping, and men moved onto chewing.

I love this snuff by the way, I’ve smoked a pack a day for 18 years, and now I’m down to 5 cigs or less a day, mostly upon waking or after eating.

We chewed and dipped during PE in junior high and high school during the late seventies/early eighties. Smoking was allowed at my high school until my junior year. I’m glad I never got addicted to chewing.

Wow! I got caned for smoking at my English boarding school in the early 50s. At that time non smokers were considered as unusual as Vegans are today.

Kids dipped at my high school in the 90s. Rarely did anyone get caught. I remember boys brazenly walking around with the outline of a dip can wore in the back pocket of their jeans, it would take a fool to not notice. I never cared for dip, but loved my Camels.

We smoked the bathrooms out on the way back from lunch and between classes. Occasionally someone got caught, but not too often. Usually it was the ones that wandered away from a toilet with the cig when a teacher walked in. If you stayed around a corner, near water, you could ditch it because it was a rule that whoever was near the door would address a teacher by name when he walked in, thus alerting the smokers to extinguish their cigs.

My favorite time to sneak a smoke was a few minutes before the bell would ring to signal a class switch, I never got caught, so must’ve been a good time.

I remember my grandparents talking about smoking grapevine in the 1930s, and my dad the marijuana advocate once told me he got my grandfather to admit they smoked ditchweed/hemp/wild marijuana that grew in the bottomlands during the Depression.

In 1932, Lucky Strike ran an ad campaign asking consumers if they inhaled. Apparently smoking was more of a pastime than a method for nicotine delivery. I don’t get the impression that people a hundred years ago were necessarily sucking down cigarettes on a schedule like we do today. In the 90s, as new smokers, we felt compelled to have one upon waking…every hour, after every meal…and so on. 100 years ago, tobacco was more of an enjoyable luxury rather than vice and not treated as a crutch, but rather as something to do when bored or occasionally. I don’t think it crossed their mind to go have a smoke just because they finished dinner or it had been an hour since their last.

Define “school”. I started college in the US in 1973, and people routinely smoked in class. Students and profs. In my HS, the administration tried to deal with smoking by allowing it, outside, on a specific patio. I’m not sure if you needed a note form your parents, but that would have been 1972, when I was a senior.

These days, of course, no tobacco allowed on school grounds, period, by anyone at any time. This is in CA.

High School in the 1960’s. Snuff wasn’t well known enough to draw any attention in my area. Some of the baseball players used it and that was about all I was aware of. I don’t know if it was tolerated or just not noticed.

I started school over 70 years ago and I can affirm that even chewing gum was absolutely forbidden. In HS, which I started in 1950, smoking was banned everywhere inside except the teachers break room (and even there it was probably against the rules). They closed their eyes when students smoked outside the building. And we were allowed to chew gum.

In college, both the teachers and students smoked regularly and no attempt was made to stop it. Then smoking was banned in the classrooms (along with eating and drinking), but still allowed in offices. Then banned in buildings but allowed outside, at least 9 meters from any entrance. There were ashcans located at the 9 meter places. Recently they have been removed and smoking is banned everywhere on the campus.

Outside of baseball players, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone chewing tobacco.

High School early 70s. A lot of us (even some of the girls) dipped snuff. If you were too obvious the principal would confiscate the can. Every year at the end of the year, he would build some sort of “monument” in the trophy case just inside the doors out of them. I started dipping when I was about 8; my grandmother who was in her 80s told me about kids she went to school with chewing plug tobacco. In class. So I’m guessing in rural places and mill towns, it was probably done.

It is possible you did but didn’t know it. Unless I actually dip snuff, or pack some Red Man, in front of you I don’t have many “tells”. I don’t spit and I’m kinda fastidious about dental care. In a pinch I can even eat without losing my chew. So if we just met and talked casually you would probably never know.