Well, we had quite a discussion about FUBAR and attendant issues, mostly started by a few scathing comments of mine. I hope I have ‘explained’ myself now and that there is no lingering disharmony on this most excellent site. As I have said, I defend robustly the right to review both negatively and positvely and I do feel there is a place for grumpy old men like me to occasionaly be grumpy. However, I also recognise (and love) the unique style of this site in that there is for the most part a gentility here that is rare to say the least. Let me say now, I love and respect our re-vitalised snuff industry and remember the days when snuffing seemed to be a dying thing; of course you are business people and of course there may be times when I as a consumer feel the need to disagree or review in a negative sense, but all of our resident business guys are ethical in every way and I would certainly modify any comment I have made that seemed to suggest otherwise. Disonhest? No. Room for improvement? Yes, as for us all. Enough of that. I have started this thread purely because a comment that Juxtaposer made seemed so important - selling or aiming snuff sales at the younger market. I know no one is suggesting that it is sold to minors, but maybe there is room or need for discussion? As Juxtaposer said, this site is very much a think tank for snuffing.
My daughter is sixteen in two weeks and she has been smoking for about a year and is sadly hooked on the horrible things, now i know i should not engourage her too use any tobacco products and i have no wish to offend but i would prefer her to snuff instead of smoking, we have a long family history of respiratory illness. I have lost many loved ones to smoking related disease both granparents who raised me died horribly on oxygen cylinders and both my mother and brother have COPD my mum has given up for three years and brother is currently in hospital because he can’t give up. Every time he goes into hospital he gets better because he can’t smoke in there, then he goes home to his flat where he lives alone and starts smoking again. When he comes out this time he is coming to live with us and our house is a non smoking environment so i hope he finally quits. My worst fear is that my daughter will also develop health problems related to smoking and it will ruin her quality of life. So when i find some of my snuff missing i don’t look too hard for it enough said.
Thats really hard and I send my best wishes to your family - I lost a brother a couple of years ago. He found he had difficulty swallowing at Christmas and passed away 6 weeks later with a morphine pump on each leg so doped he didn’t even know who he was. It was purely and simply down to the cigarettes that he couldn’t give up. I struggle with any suggestion of getting young people into tobacco - but converting those already hooked on cigs to snuff is a positive thing. Despite the fact that snuff is (probably) almost completely harmless I think the snuff buisness world has to tread carefully. Snuff has the better press of any tobacco product at the moment but thats because its seen as a viable quitting product by some people. Any suggestion that youth is being targetted would not go down well. And I am not for a second saying any of our business buddies are doing that, just talking about perceptions.
Thanks snuffster my brother admits its mostly because he’s lonely so hopefully being in a family home will help him out plus he will have free access to my snuff collection. The only comments i have had are about the Toque tins as some people have associated it with toke n pass which many youngsters are familiar with but once i have explained to the cretins they have seemed to lose interest. In general my experience of others views has suprised me as many people have thought i was doing something illegal when snuffing although that could also be to do with their perceptions of how i look as i have had people stop and ask me if could sell them drugs and other stupid things. I disagree strongly with encouraging young people to take up tobacco but like you wish many more smokers would switch to snuffing. I think its a bit of a paradox as while snuff will benefit from a more modern image its the rich history and those beautiful old fashioned tins that i find so attractive.
It’s unrealistic for parents of smoking teens to insist their teens stop smoking and feel self righteous and preach to others who allow tobacco use in a somewhat controllable fashion. Their kids haven’t stopped smoking, they’ve only stopped being honest about it. That’s like stopping their kids from having sex by taking their condoms away, congratulations might soon be in order on the new grandchildren. My 17 yr old smokes and I’ve been unsuccessful at trying to get him to switch to snuff, so far. I hate the thought of him smoking in the first place much less smoking the chemically manipulated cancer sticks, but I can’t police him 24/7.
You are right, you can’t insist anyone stops smoking, certainly no one could do that to me and I was a teen smoker too.
Absolutely right you can’t control other people i have to work hard enough controlling myself, i guess all you can do is lead by example and demonstrate that there is another way.
One thing that is not often discussed re nicotine addiction is the VERY strong genetic correlation. Smoking runs in families not because parents smoke but because they are the parents. Twins separated at birth and raised in smoking and non-smoking households respectively end up equally addicted to nicotine only as a result of their birth parents, not their environment. IMHO, if you are addicted to nicotine it is (almost) pointless trying to stop your kids from becoming addicted; what we can do though is guide their addiction to less harmful nicotine delivery methods. I wrote something in a previous post you copied below if you are interested. There is a great section in “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell on nicotine and how addictive it is (or not). It is based on a study done by researchers at Michigan University. As they say, “in the heated rhetoric of the war on smoking” a critical point is often lost. “…how ‘sticky’ smoking ends up being to any single person, depends a great deal on his or her own particular reaction to nicotine…of all teenagers who experiment with cigarettes, only about a third go on to smoke regularly. Nicotine may be highly addictive, but it is only addictive in some people, some of the time…smoking experts used to think that 90-95% of all those who smoked were regular smokers. But several years ago, the smoking questions on the federal government’s national health survey were made more specific, and researchers discovered to their astonishment, that a fifth of all smokers don’t smoke every day. There are millions of Americans, in other words, who manage to smoke regularly and not be hooked - people for whom smoking is contagious but not sticky” There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. see also this: Saul Shiffman1 (1) Clinical Psychology, 706 OEH, University of Pittsburgh, 15260 Pittsburgh, PA, USA Received: 24 May 1988 Accepted: 5 October 1988 Abstract This study explores the behavior of tobacco chippers — very light smokers who regularly use tobacco without developing dependence. Eighteen chippers (CHs) who averaged a maximum of five cigarettes per day, but who smoked at least 4 days per week, were compared to 29 dependent smokers (DSs). Laboratory data showed that CHs inhale cigarette smoke and are exposed to nicotine. In both experimental and retrospective self-report data, CHs showed no signs of tobacco withdrawal when abstinent. CHs also differed from DSs in their pattern of smoking: their smoking was less linked with mood states. However, the hypothesis that they were social smokers was contradicted. CHs also differed on psychosocial variables relevant to a stress-coping model of smoking: they reported less stress, better coping, and more social support, but these differences were small. Although the two groups were demographically similar, smoking behavior differences between CHs and DSs were long-standing: the two groups differed in their responses to initial smoking and in their family histories of smoking and cessation. CHs’ smoking behavior challenges classical theories of dependence; further research is needed on the factors that may protect CHs from addiction.
Thats very interesting stuff, none of which I’d seen before. Thinking about it, I know a lot of ‘chippers’ and in actual fact I regard myself as one now - my previous tobacco usage was heavy cigarette addiction now I’ve converted that to daily snuff use and the very occasional cig, but weirdly I can leave snuff for a day, not smoke, and feel no discomfort. Addiction is a strange and powerful thing and often missed by the studies is the massive amount of variables when it comes to individuals.
I think I was addicted to nicotine long before I ever had my first dip or smoke. My father was a heavy smoker from before I was born. Both of his parents died from lung problems due to smoking. Most of the family on my mothers side used tobacco. So, I got it from both sides. My father quit smoking when I was 13 after braking his ribs and nearly coughing himself to death. I think not having the second hand smoke around pushed me over the edge and I started dipping. I don’t know if I would have gotten so deep into tobacco if they had the age restrictions they do now. Also, if smoking had not been allowed in high school. It probably would not have made a deference because I was already hooked.
Age restrictions are a bunch of phoooey bullshit. education and self control are the key. The fact that tobacco was ILLEGAL was why it was so fun for me to do when i was younger (14 and up). If your a parent or anybody else you should just be glad your kids/friends/family/etc. decided to be sneaky and use tobacco or alcohol instead of do far worse things to entertain their young bored minds. Also there aren’t many things that are going to kill you if you use in moderation, but that can be reversed as well to just about anything can kill you (or at least ruin your life) if you over indulge. Anyway thats my two cents 
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Defiantely not prohibition in fact maybe were coming at this from the wrong angle i recall reading somewhere that nicotine helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease so who knows there might come a time in the future where snuff is recomended for health purposes wouldn’t that be something?
i read somewhere that greater than 90% of schizophrenics are addicted to nicotine. the theory is that they are self medicating. i wonder sometimes how much we are all self-medicating. I mean while not clinically schizophrenic necessarily perhaps we are all at various spots along the continuum. Nicotine might help keep us on the (relative) straight and narrow?
LOL! Now that I LIKE! Tom
I’ve often wondered that too, even I don’t like me when I don’t get my nicotine. My temper gets a little out of control without it.
I agree completely about being ‘addicted’ before you even start. I had a real ambition to use tobacco because I would see all my relatives, brothers using it as a kid. When I got older and got into music and saw my favourite musicians smoking, I was hooked and there was no way I was not going to do it. No prohibtion will ever work if people want to do something. The only thing that might stop kids is the general trend of just making smoking impossible in public, on tv anywhere but in private. Certainly when I was an 18 year old kid playing in a band etc you could not have educated me out of smoking for the sinple reason that I didn’t give a shit. The thing educators miss is that teenagers think they will live forever.
So are we going to let the kids roll bill straws and toot gobs of tobacco? Or are we going to educate them on the finer points of snuff enjoyment? I understand you can sell a hell of a lot of snuff to youngsters using straws. But isn’t this an aberration or am I missing something here? I have never snuffed through a tube so I’m just using my own logic here. Is this where snuff is headed? Anyone with experience please explain to me what I am missing as I am not about to try this myself.
education is key. Yes many teens think they are invincible but most of them really seem to be what I called at the time pussies.
This is complex stuff, and its mixing morality with buisness which in itself is a fairly complex issue. My main position is that I am an adult tobacco user without too many concerns about it. I use a form thats fairly harmless and as long as I can get it without too much trouble Im happy. But as a parent, I don’t think there should be any drive at all to influence any young person to use tobacco in any form. I would like a position where society - and the health freaks and medical world - woke up to the fact that there is a form of tobacco that is relatively safe and that it may be a choice that smoking addicts should be made more aware of. I wouldn’t make sparkly rockets and packages with the stated aim to appeal to young people, because that will also appeal to kids. In the legal world, which as a cop I see the criminal side of - its become common for lawyers to google people before court to get anything on them that may be of use. We haven’t had a snuff litigation yet, but I would be really wary if I was a manufacturer or supplier about saying anything on the net about angling buisness towards younger people. My bottom line is that so we adults can enjoy snuff for evermore, we don’t want snuff being messed about with, so the whole thing needs to be kept tight and above board so ur simple pleasure remains available, unscrutinised and not hassled.