I have a close friend whom likes to smoke his camels and has given some snuff that I bought a go. At first he got the burning sensation off the many different snuffs I introduced to him but he is insistent on smoking more camels. He tells me now that I snuff more then he smokes. So my 2 questions are, whats the difference between snorting and snuffing?

My other question is how much pea sized pinches will it take, to equal a pack of cigarettes?

It’s all relative. I don’t think there’s a direct correlation hou can make between amounts of snuff and cigarettes, they are vastly different delivery methods for nicotine. In the end it doesn’t matter how much snuff I use because I could never use enough to make it as expensive as smoking. As for sniffing vs. snorting, the object of sniffing is to get snuff into your lower nose. The object of snorting is to get other powders into your sinuses. You never want to snort snuff.

How much snuff to equal a pack of smokes?  Variations between people and snuffs make it a difficult question to answer.  But I know two things:

1. I comfortably use 3-5ml snuff a day. I used to be a 10cigs a day smoker.
2. As much snuff as I want to shove up my nose, I won’t get any tar or toxic gases in my lungs. 

@SandwhichIsles speaks the truth.  Never snort.

I try to sniff but stil often end up with snuff feeling like it’s hit my eyeballs so I guess that counts as snorting, unintentional as it may be. How do I avoid this scenario??

@fj1988 gently does it. Check out the “snufftaking” category threads, there are lots of good advice on helping beginners get the best out of their snuff.

@fj1988 a little bit of moisture will help. either in your nose or in your snuff .Adding moisture to snuff makes it heavier adding moisture to your nose makes the snuff stick. If you drink 2 quarts of fluids daily your body will stay hydrated.  

I read somewhere on pubmed that the nasal lining can absorb nicotine at about 50% efficiency. So if your bump is about .05 gram up each nostril that’s .1 gram at a time. Railroad mills tested their numbers and reported to the Massachusetts government and is about 20mg/g. So if you load each nostril with a normal size that’s 2mg at 50% efficiency. Or 1mg over about 10 minutes. About the same as a cigarette. That’s why snuff is so successful a delivery method for smoking cessation, it closely correlates to smoking.

@fj1988 just keep at it, your body will learn all on it’s own. Tricks like dropping your adams apple allow you to take snuffs above your skill level but just snuffing and time alone will give you the practice to progressively take finer and finer snuffs. After spending a lot of time with American scotches and toasts one day I realized whites had become easy to take normally too, just happened naturally.

@snuffsahoy I am a huge fan of the adams apple drop method.  Removing the lungs from the equation makes it a lot harder to bork it up. 

Thanks guys an’ gals! I guess practise makes perfect - it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it!

Thanks everyone for your responses. Good info to learn about nicotine being 50% efficiency in the nose lining. This has led me to believe I maybe consuming about 3 or 4 cigarettes a day with snuff. So when they say some snuffs have lower nicotine content, does that mean the type of tobacco used has lower nicotine content?

Yeah, different types of tobacco have varying levels of nicotine, and different parts of the leaf have different levels i.e. lamina and midrib. So really it’s all over the board. Not to mention adjusting the pH modifies it further as does the size of the grind. I only mentioned the example above to illustrate how snuffing could be an exact replacement for cigarettes usually. It really does satisfy, it just needs to be given a chance. Another research article took levels on the nicotine metabolite cotinine snuffers and noticed experienced snuffers maintained levels as high if not higher than smokers, people trying it out did not. Don’t know why, but once your needs are being met by snuff you’ll know it, and probably smile a little bit.

An interesting read:

http://www.bmj.com/content/283/6295/814

“The increase (of plasma nicotine) shown by the daily snuffers was comparable to the average
increase of 62.3 nmol/l (10.1 ng/ml) obtained from a single cigarette by
a group of heavy smokers. The peak nicotine concentrations in the daily
snuffers were also similar to the peak values in 136 heavy
smokers–222.6 and 226-3 nmol/l (36.1 and 36.7 ng/ml), respectively.
Unusual multiple-dose snuffing produced massive increases in plasma
nicotine to concentrations that have never been recorded in smokers.”

What’s so unusual about multi-dose snuffing?

This is very useful information. Seems to me that people in my area correlate sniffing anything with illegal drugs. Should I try to explain or just let someone harass me about taking a pinch? The last time I was at a party someones parents thought I was sniffing something I wasn’t supposed to. It was the Paul Gotards White caffeine so I can understand that I would get funny looks. My friends explained to them later that I was having a pinch of snuff because they knew what I had.

I know I get weird looks from people when I’m having breakfast and having an irish coffee. After that, I have a pinch and carry on my conversation with my friend. Though no one has approached me about a problem, thankfully.

786 @mrsniffles, Don’t take the harassment man, you must certainly educate them if you don’t wish to be known as a heroin user and cokehead.  You can get into waaaaay more trouble with such a reputation than you ever could merely by explaining your use when anypony looks askance.  I’m lucky to live where I do, the majority of people I encounter know what snuff is when they see me taking it.  There may be some joshing, but afterward they’re like, no I know it’s tobacco.

I never take snuff openly in public because I too, think people in my area will think it’s cocaine or something illegal. I do take pinches when I drive, or use a bullet, but I mostly just do it around the farm where I live. The goats and horses don’t seem to mind. In fact, my nanny(momma) goat really likes vintage old Ralph’s Scotch snuff. She licks it off my hand, gets some up her nose, sneezes, and then wants more. I give her snuff as a treat in addition to oats!