How long have you been sniffing tobacco?

I tried snuff for the first time when I was 13 years old (now I am 28 years old). It was Pöschl’s Gletscher Prise and it’s hard to believe, but my first box of this tobacco is still in my house! It is already 16 years old! My second snuff was McChrystals Original Genuine. We sat with a friend in the park and sniffed it. I used to use snuff very rarely before. But I became seriously interested in snuff 3 years ago and now I have a large collection of nasal tobaccos in my house. There are a lot of various aromas. I tried this type of tobacco use and fell in love with it. Tell your story now

3 Likes

Started about 11 or 12 years ago, wanted to stop smoking cigarettes (still a work in progress, but a lot less than I was on then). I started watching Milverton68’s channel on Youtube (not sure it is around any more) and decided to give snuff a go. Pretty much fell in love with it, although I do go in cycles. I also found it useful when the smoking ban came in place and didn’t have to go outside for a guilty smoke every half hour.

11 Likes

I started in 2015. I was a professional quitter of cigarettes: I quit all the time!  I wanted a way to keep tobacco in my life. Nicotine supplements didn’t offer the same enjoyment as tobacco, and oral snus gave me uncontrollable hiccups. Around that time I saw an episode of QI where they talked about snuff the same day that I read a passage in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep where the main character took a pinch of snuff which was too coincidental to ignore. I called around and found a local shop that sold Silver Dollar original. I immediately tried it in my car and blew out both of my eyeballs and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Here’s that ridiculous QI segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri6Y-cXACqM

13 Likes

I started about 3 years ago.  I had tried almost every other type of tobacco and was interested in nasal snuff; I couldn’t find any at a local store but bought some peach scotch on eBay and have been in love with it since that day.

9 Likes

Probably 15 yrs on and off. It seems if you like the briar, and know others who partake, eventually somebody from that genre will turn you on to snuff.  All snuffers I’ve ever met personally were also pipe smokers.

7 Likes

“I was a teenage snuff fiend”

I have some pedigree with tobacco more generally. My grandmother made cigars for Wills & Castella and my Mum and Dad met whilst they were both working at Imperial Tobacco in the 60’s. The first time I took snuff was about 40 years ago or so when I was very [too} young on a camping trip, one of the older lads got a tin of McCrystal’s Jip out when we were around the campfire one evening, tapped a little out of the tin and snuffed it from his anatomical snuffbox. I was curious and wanted to try. I’d love to say the first bump was divine, but in truth it was dire and burned like hell! Everybody else split their sides laughing… More delicate sniffing did help on future attempts though :wink:

I started smoking cigarettes more regularly not too long after that, but smoking, especially when you are underage (as I’m sure that many will sympathise) is not especially discreet. Thankfully local newsagents and tobacconists always had some basic snuff available too, typically Hedges or JH Wilsons etc. It was the 80’s and folks were much more relaxed about tobacco then plus tobacco was very cheap, cigarettes only had teeny/if any health warnings, you could buy a cigarette and 3 matches from the shops for 8 or 10p, snuff was dirt cheap back then.

Things carried on that way for several years, smoking, snuffing (and drinking!) as social circumstances, convention or desire determined. I had expensive tastes in cigarettes (the story of my life unfortunately for me) and was fond of more exotic cigarettes, Marlboro Reds in those nice soft packets, Camels, Luckies, Sobranie and Cartier which meant that once I was able to, I would go to specialist tobacconist when I could to find those out, and more exotic snuff came via that route too. But I was still primarily a cigarette smoker. That changed in the late 90’s I guess, partly due to changes in personal circumstances, but also due to the rising cost of branded cigarettes, there was a guy who was a lorry driver that used to drink in our local pub who sold Drum rolling tobacco on the downlow very cheaply – I switched to rolling my own and snuff most of the time.

My snuff taking went up a gear dramatically in the late 00’s due to the UK smoking ban in public places, snuff had a newfound social acceptability and I revelled in that. The mushroom growth of suppliers and distributors like our friends at Toque was great too. Oddly this is when my TAD really started to really kick in for some reason, I started blending my own rolling tobaccos, and I also started smoking pipes and cigars more too. By the mid-10’s point I was really starting to get fed up with smoking cigarettes as I really wasn’t enjoying them anymore and coughed badly in the mornings. Candidly, if I could have smoked the cigarettes that I enjoyed I would have carried on, but it was like smoking 20 or so, and only enjoying 3 or 4 of these. But, even with the snuff and pipes I couldn’t let it go even though I wanted to.

In late 2015 I swore off all tobacco products and started solely vaping. I did have a very occasional lapse by choice or by accident and have a cigarette, cigar, pipe, or pinch, but this was very occasional, one season to the next and sometimes more. Over the course of the last year, I have slowly started to return to snuff, and also to enjoy a pipe sometimes on the rare occasions that I go up to the pub these days. I’m not sure if I will continue snuffing or if this is a temporary reversal. But the odd pinch of snuff and an occasional pipe isn’t the end of the world to me currently, I have enough stocks of both to last me until the end of my time if I so choose. Snuff is very practicable and is the only one that I really ‘miss’ or reminisce about so for the time being at least; that’s how I’m living - All in all nearly 40 years :open_mouth:

16 Likes

@MisterPaul I for one am grateful you have returned to the occasional pinch if only for your contributions to this forum which are always looked forward to. I wish I had discovered snuff in the late 1980s instead of taking up cigarettes. I first encountered snuff in the late 90s. A colleague at work had been a small tin of strawberry scented snuff as a “Secret Santa” gift. It ended up being passed round the pub table and I remember joyously snuffing a good few pinches. I gave up smoking in 2005 due to high prices and a desire to go tobacco free. I maintained this until around 2011 when I relapsed and became a furtive secret smoker for a few years which is truly the worst of both worlds. In 2020 longing for tobacco again I read mention on Twitter of all places of someone enjoying a tin of Grand Cairo. I did a quick internet search and ordered a small tap tin of the same which I slowly consumed over about a month. I have not looked back since and am an exclusive taker of snuff.

10 Likes

@Huysmans - Thanks so much for these kind comments :slight_smile: Sounds like you have worked your way into a favourable position from the above - Good for you; well done! 

Although there’s not been any vitamin N in mine for some time, vaping is really starting to get on my nerves a bit now, though it has reduced significantly anyways since I started taking snuff more again - I think that if I can get vaping out of the everyday I’ll be sitting pretty more or less :wink:

6 Likes

I first bought a tin of “Cokesnuff” in 1968, at a head shop in California. Then, as a student in Scotland, in 1970, I wandered into Rattray’s tobacco shop in Perth, to buy some Golden Virginia rolling tobacco. Behind the counter, was a display of Smith’s snuffs. The proprietor then asked me if I would like to try a pinch. I did, don’t remember the name, but he helped me pick out about ten little glass jars. I used it all rather quickly and bought a bunch more before I returned to the USA. Fast forward to 2004 or 05, after discovering cigars, and quitting cigarettes, I somehow found a local store with a few cans of Garrett Sweet. Bought a few, enjoyed it a lot, then I found Mr Snuff and Toque, and one from Germany also. That’s about it. Still a snuff addict but I quit all the smoking.

10 Likes

I would have first tried it probably 2000/2001 with Poschl’s Raspberry and a sweet scotch snuff.  That’s all I was able to buy locally at the time, and now I can’t even get them. 

I first started snuffing regularly 2006/2007, when I found this place, things went a little bonkers. 

I had well over 300 different kinds of snuff at one point back then. 

When my sons were born 11 years ago I kind of forgot about snuff. 

But then over the last couple of years I fell back into a Copenhagen habit, which is ridiculously expensive, so I ordered some new snuff to kick the cope.

6 Likes

I think I was 15 or 16 when I first tried snuff. I’m 28 now. It hasn’t been a consistent hobby for me, but I’ve usually had some snuff lying around for all those years.

6 Likes

I first tried snuff when I was 16. In 1970 I was a foreign exchange student in Scotland. Perth was the closest big city, and wandering around I found a store called Rattray’s Tobacconist. I smoked ryo’s back then, Golden Virginia iirc. Anyway, I saw a shelf with little jars of snuff, and asked if I might try a bit. The proprietor took out a jar of of Smith’s Cardinal. Long story short is I bought five or six little jars, I remember the Carnation being particularly nice. I used the ones I bought, and bought more that year, taking several home when I returned to California. Fast forward to the early 2000s, when online I stumbled across Toque, which was a new brand at the time. 15 years later I’ve quit smoking and become a snuff addict and collector.

10 Likes

Hi. My first time was 15 years ago, when I was 26/7. A friend of mine, a friar(!) was a heavy user and he gave me a pinch. I still remember vividly the effect lol. I began to use snuff regularly in September '17.

6 Likes

7 years ago I took my first pinch. At that time, I only used one or twice a week. This was the trend for my first year and a half of snuffing. Now, I pinch every day, throughout the entire day, typically letting my nose rest at least one day a week. I’ve come to love and appreciate the hobby and the nostalgia associated with it. Now the goal is to help more people find out about this wonderful hobby.

8 Likes

An uncle who matriculated at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford had become a snuff aficionado while an undergraduate and it was he who introduced me to snuff. My interest in snuff was prior to 1965 but it was only in that year (or thereabouts) that I started buying it. My local House of Bewlay had a good stock but it was Wix in Piccadilly Circus and Bacon Brothers in Cambridge that had the largest assortments by far. Absolute Mecca’s for the snuff enthusiast.

After the wholesale closure of traditional tobacconists in the early 1980s there was a long hiatus in my snuff career that lasted at least a decade or more until I discovered from a chance encounter with Vivian Rose (snuff-man at Charring Cross) that G. Smith & Sons and Wilsons of Sharrow operated a snuff by post system. You would tick from a printed list what you wanted and in what quantity, tot-up the cost including postage and send the form back with a cheque. That access rekindled my snuff interest and I’ve never looked back since. Wilson’s only stopped the postal system for online access quite recently.

11 Likes

My first try of snuff was at age 13. I’m 63 now. An elderly uncle let me have a go. Woah! My head exploded. He encouraged me to perservere and it got better. After finding a mentholated snuff for me I got to like it more. On and off during my teens I continued to snuff, but I was also smoking cigarettes and a pipe. At age 20 I was sharing a flat in London with a long time snuff taker who only liked Fribourg & Treyer, Dr. James Robertson Mixture and Princes, Princes Special. We went to F&Ts wonderful old shop in the Haymarket and that became my source. I bought a rosewood snuff box and paisley handkerchiefs. I haven’t stopped snuffing since.

7 Likes

Wooow :heart_eyes: this is very interesting for me

3 Likes

Thanks a lot. Glad you enjoyed it. I could tell a lot about my snuffing adventures when very young.

Graeme

3 Likes

I really love stories) so if you have time, be sure to tell me them. I will definitely read it over a cup of coffee and a snuff tobacco. :heart_eyes:

2 Likes

Oh nice. I have a few about my young years and snuff. I could send you easily by audio clip if I had somewhere to send them to you.

Best wishes,

Graeme

2 Likes