I was wondering if the exit of Great Britain from the European Economic Union will be in our favour for getting the continentals to export snuff to Great Britain.

I realise  that meeting after meeting has taken place and they can’t even agree on whose pies or sandwiches they should have for the lunch and tea breaks.

But if the Germans and the other snuff makers already export to the rest of the world, we may fall into the category of “rest of the world.”

Is it illegal for the continentals to export their snuff to the rest of the world at the moment?

Any enlightened people out there?

It’s not exactly “illegal”, it’s just that tobacco is very profitable most countries don’t want outsiders profiting from it. At most they will do what some countries have done and just tax you, but no one will restrict anything. Also, I’m not sure yet, but according to the news Brexit hasn’t been fully implemented. There’s a lot of saber rattling from the EU and they’re setting up a lot of obstacles for Britain, so until everything is done and the ink dries I think it will be business as usual. I’d say you’ve got 2 more years at your disposal to stock up on snuff, and then you’ve got 2-3 years before they get to regulating snuff itself, but this is an optimistic estimate.

It’s not illegal for them to export it, it’s the costs of complying with other countries regulations that’s prohibitive. At the moment, the cost for registering all the various products in each country in the EU is prohibitive, but as all the existing EU laws will be transferred to our statute, that won’t go away when we leave. The costs of registering each tobacco product, and the subsequent annual fees will remain. The TPD element of our new statute would need to be repealed for these companies to see the UK as a viable export market. The US is complex too, as different states have different legislation. That’s why snuff.me.uk will only ship to some states and not others. Canada and Australia have high tobacco taxation there, and there might be other hoops of fire they have to jump through in order to retail in those areas. Most snuff companies are taking the easy way out of not dealing with overseas legislation, as they don’t think it’s worth the time, effort and money.