A friend of mine recently gave me a can of Swedish portioned snus.
I had misgivings about trying it because every form of American oral tobacco I ever tried left me a quivering, dizzy, vomitting mess. That would include snuff, plug, and shredded tobacco. This always mystified me because I was a smoker, and favored unfiltereds, for years. I never experience any of those symptoms from smoking.
Anyway, I’ve used the little pouches a couple times now. They taste only mildly of tobacco but deliver a two-fisted nicotine buzz. They don’t cause me to salivate heavily like American products.
So what’s so different about snus?
I’m not sure about Snus. The product I’ve seen by that name is made by the Camel cigarette people. SnusCamel I tried it once because my son had some and I wanted to confirm that it actually had tobacco in it. I think it has other stuff mixed in and advertizes itself as and alternative - like maybe it . Snus is what I would call a “training snuff” in that it gets you hooked on nicotine but doesn’t give the big jolt the hard stuff will.
I dipped Skol and Copenhagen for almost 20 years and would still get the quizzy feeling sometimes - like when I popped in a good dip of fresh Cop. I think dipping delievers a lot more nicotine in a shorter time than smoking.
Death by Snus Snus?
I believe the preparation of the tobacco in snus is different than the preparation for regular chewing tobacco. I suppose the chemical composition of snus might end up being different than chewing tobacco.
Interestingly, there is a study or two that claims that snus does not cause cancer at anything near the rates of cigarettes or chew. Don’t know how impartial that particular study is.
…not that I’d advocate starting tobacco of any kind. I tried snus once just as a novelty. It wasn’t disgusting like chewing tobacco is (to me, at least. Only tried that once, never again.) Didn’t seem to do much though. It was “mint” flavored which lasted only a minute or two. Then it just tasted kind of unpleasantly salty and had a numbing effect on my lip. The actual “nicotine” effect was pretty minor.
Dunno, wasn’t horrible but I don’t see any reason to ever take up snus.