Please comment below once you have access. Nice to have you guys here. -Chris

Welcome all! I must admit I had been skeptical about the ISTA when it was first mooted, simply because most of the suggestions seemed unworkable but full marks to the mods for actually getting down to doing something with the idea. In any case it’s nice to be here and I hope this experiment is a success.

Experiment might be the best word for it I’m afraid. These days it seems like damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Been reading through years past post ,I guess what I am after is a mission statement. What goals need achieving? Or is the purpose just for pubic information.

@cstokes4 - maybe, but you can’t let that stop you and I respect you having a go at this - I never took it on and you deserve credit for the experiment - whatever it leads to, or if it leads nowhere nothing has been lost. I see this thing as being a place without the ‘what are you having for breakfast’ clutter and for people that know what they are talking about to talk amongst themselves. Forget the elitist nonsense, why shouldn’t this part of the site exist? Because some people don’t like it? That’s not a good reason. It can only be what the members make it. Give it time.

Hello All! One idea I’ve been tossing around would be for the ISTA to eventually own Snuffhouse. That way it would turn into a member owned, rather than a commercial site. I think the first step in that process would be to charge periodic dues from the ISTA members and take over the maintenance cost of the site. Eventually, perhaps, we’d have the funds to buy the site outright (assuming Dave is willing to sell). Also someone would have to be elected treasurer. Thoughts?

I’m in. Hot diggity. The only thing I’d suggest for this side of the forum is that we don’t neglect the other side. I’m okay with this being an elite club as long as we don’t become so elite that we ignore the noobs and peons.

No, of course not. If you were ever in the Boy Scouts, perhaps you were aware of the Order of the Arrow. It was an elect group of elite scouts, but their purpose was service to the greater scouting community. I would like to think of us as similar.

@Xander, I was never a Boy Scout. I lived out of town and likely spent more time doing outdoor stuff than any 3 Boy Scouts. I do however get the point. I agree with shaman, we need a sort of mission statement. Nothing elaborate, just a base idea what we want to accomplish.

I’m in, glad to be here! I’ve never been in an elite group before…

It would be great if we could all contribute to a mission statement and such. I’d like this to be one big collaboration!

“The ISTA aims to promote the enjoyment of traditional nasal snuff and the study of it’s history, practices and manufacture. The association members are snuff devotees who through their knowledge, experience or expertise are able to further the understanding of this ancient tobacco form amongst fellow members and enhance the pleasure of it’s use” There was something like this in the old snuff blenders association booklet (defunct trade association from the 60’s - 80s), but I can’t find it at the moment - I’ve probably stolen bits from that. It’s bloody hard to come up with the right wording when you get down to it and I’m certainly not suggesting this as the finished article.

Great to be here. Thank you for the generous acceptance into the ISTA. I look forward to contributing!

That’s a good start, Nigel. Anyone else want to contribute to it. Wordsmithing is usually best done individually, but collaboration can add missed points.

I’m actually anxious to get a mission statement prepared, because we’ve had a bit of an unexpected backlash against the existence of the ISTA, mainly I think for being elitist. We need to make it clear to the general forum what we are, and what we aren’t.

Hello all, I’m happy to be part of this group. I think that preparing a mission statement is a great idea.

Hello all. @Abraxas - suggestion for a slight simplification of your statement: “The ISTA aims to encourage the enjoyment of nasal snuff and the study of its history and traditions. ISTA members hope to achieve these aims by making available their collective knowledge, skills and experience.” Hopefully that says the same thing in fewer words!

Agreed, much more succinct.

“The ISTA aims to encourage the enjoyment of nasal snuff and the study of its history and traditions. ISTA members hope to achieve these aims by making available their collective knowledge, skills and experience.” I like this, lays out our aims well with the minimum of fuss.

“aims to encourage the enjoyment of nasal snuff” I wonder if this sounds like we are pushing it onto people. Could we say this a different way? The ISTA aims to ( educate ) people on the enjoyment of nasal snuff and the study of it’s history and traditions?

How about “promote the enjoyment” ?

I think if we promote or encourage it’s use, then at some point anti tobacco zealots are gonna have something to sink their teeth into. If we are readily available to share our passion of snuff and let others decide if they’d like to join us, that seems different to me.

‘Educate’ would be a less controversial term, but do we want to play it safe with reference to the zealots, or tell it like it is? Edit: thinking about it, we could say we were promoting snuff ‘as an alternative to smoking’. But then again, I see snuff as a stand-alone thing as I didn’t smoke before starting with snuff.

Sadly the tobacco nazis even attack the alternative methods. I think educate or facilitate knowledge would be less stigmatizing.

or…‘promote the understanding of nasal snuff…’

@Koba22 - that works well for me.

As an ISTA member our primary purpose is to stay connected with snuffhouse.org and to share our experience,strengths and prudence for the betterment of the snuff community.

@basement_shaman That’s excellent - I’d happily sign up to it. One small point - might ‘insight’ be better than ‘foresight’?

Is it going to be a club inside a forum? I though about something bigger like a central organization for clubs. I’ve even wanted to make a Greater Poland and Kuyavian-Pomeranian Snuff Takers Association and connect it with ISTA. For people inside the clubs it wouldn’t be a problem in meeting in person.

Sure, if it gets big enough. It could have local chapters. Also Filek, you’ll be needed to translate the mission statement into Polish once we finalize it.

To clarify, I would like Snuffhouse to be the forum of the ISTA, rather than be a club within a club.

Isn’t that just the same? If ISTA whants to be a proper organization it needs a new website. Anyone heard about any pipe club? Might by a good start to you to look for inspirations.

“The ISTA aims to promote the understanding of nasal snuff and encourage the study of its history and traditions. ISTA members hope to achieve these aims by making available their collective knowledge, skills and experience”. Hows that?

Substitute ‘seek to achieve’ rather than ‘hope to’ and I would say you have it Koba22. The historical weakness of this ISTA idea was that nothing could ever be agreed. I don’t think we should kick this mission statement idea around too long - Koba’s version avoids any notion of proselytising tobacco and keeps it to the point.

Ok excellent, so are we agreed on: “The ISTA aims to promote the understanding of nasal snuff and encourage the study of its history and traditions. ISTA members seek to achieve these aims by making available their collective knowledge, skills and experience”.

@Filek perhaps it should have its own website at some point. I’d like to think of it as an umbrella organization of which Snuffhouse is a part. First thing first: mission statement. I’m happy with this version.

@Xander - let’s hang it on the wall then - could you put it into a scroll on the skull and cross bones or at the top of the ISTA pages? If we agreed on it, let’s be proud of it. Or maybe an extract to form the ‘motto’ part of a scroll? Maybe ‘History, Tradition, Knowledge, Skill’

I like the idea of a brief motto version. Google translate suggests the latin for the above would be; rerum, scientia, traditur, arte.

Nigel, Chris has already put it above the skull image on the main ISTA page. As to altering the image to include words. I don’t know. Maybe he can do it. I like the motto idea as well, and the Latin sounds cool. Funny that skill translates to “arte”.

@khalid Nice thought about the Latin, but Google Translate doesn’t do it very well. Give me a little while and I’ll provide a better version. (I’m a Latin teacher in real life.)

I belive Fellowship should be part of our motto .

If you want ‘History, Tradition, Knowledge, Skill’ literally into Latin you get ‘annales, traditio, scientia, ars’ but I think ‘annalibus, traditione, scientia, arte’ [ablative case] is probably better Latin if you are just going to leave them hanging out of context. ‘Fellowship’ is slightly awkward to translate - assuming that you mean it in the ‘sharing fellowship’ sense, ‘benevolentia’ is probably closest. As a Latin motto, however, the above is a bit lacking - it’s too much of the same. How about ‘per traditionem scientia et ars’ which would literally be ‘knowledge and skill through tradition’.

Ok. I see a few yes votes. Any objections/addendums etc before we make it official? I’d like this to be as democratic as possible. so please everyone speak your mind if you don’t like something.

There is “what” in the statement, but where is “how”. How the ISTA is going to achive those aims?

There is “what” in the statement, but where is “how”. How the ISTA is going to achive those aims?

I agree we need a “how”. I disagree it needs to be in the mission statement. The “Hows” are going to, by necessity, change constantly. The Mission Statement should be , mostly, unchanging.

I think “ISTA members seek to achieve these aims by making available their collective knowledge, skills and experience” is the ‘How’. It is purposely vague as it is part of a general mission statement, rather than a plan of action.

I think we also need to lay out guidelines for continuing membership; i.e. what it will take to stay a member and such.

Hi all, Looks like I have access. Glad to be here, and ready to promote the understanding of nasal snuff and encourage the study of its history and traditions. My knowledge, skills, and experience are at your disposal.

I think we should be either members or not based on who we are not how much we post or anything like that. The filtration should in the granting of the membership.

We have been receiving some backlash about this from some members. Some don’t like the idea at all, others don’t like the entrance criteria. I think it would be best for you all to decide on the entrance criteria. Also, I’m going to take a hands off approach from now on, I’ll still pop in and comment but I’m not going to attempt to “run” the ISTA or be it’s official spokesperson, I think its best that you all also elect someone to represent the ISTA on the forum, it would be best for the mods to keep an arms distance.

The future belong to the youth . A snuff house member who logs in often is the forum. Any member that that sticks with the forum for a year should be considered for membership. And not by the leader but by the entrance board or committee. We of ISTA can never set any hampering limitation upon the ultimate destiny of ourselves and our Fellowship, personally , collectively, structurally and spiritually, we shall ever need to build for the future survival of the association

I trust that you all will build a proper set of criteria and appoint the right person.

shaman, I would agree with you but after being here awhile I notice some patterns do emerge among members. Some are very enthusiastic for a few months, then disappear. Some others make about a year like you say and then drop off. Others like yourselves have stayed for the long haul. We had sort of agreed when trying to relaunch the ISTA that 2 years was the basic time credential (so long as the member was active). This could be waived for an outstanding service to the snufftaking community, like making a snuff website, magazine, book, snuffbox, commercial snuff, shop etc. Now that we have some start-up members here, we can decide to keep or revise that. If you think 2 years is too long then lets vote on a new criteria.

In terms of calming the public, it would be enough to write that this is not going to be a forum inside the forum - which most people think. I would suggest it (the ISTA) to be a group of people, like Xander said, contributed to the promotion of snuff in a certain way. Furthermore the subforum should be a database for relevant materials that could be cataloged in an appropriate manner, then analyzed and then available to the public in the form of the corresponding article. For instance, thanks to taking to pieces a few books, I was able to make a list of snuff takers with the anegdotes related to them concerning snuff, a topic “how a snuff got its name”, etc. I gather the material successively, so everyone is happy with the new stuff to the topics.

Also guys, this is your club meeting space, so utilize it. This is the welcome thread and we are all getting to be familiar with each others ideas, however, feel free to branch out and start new threads in the ISTA category to discuss or vote on specific ideas. Like Stokes says, we probably should elect a outreach spokesman to make public comments for us on Snuffhouse. Also a membership comittee might be a good idea, and a treasurer (if we decide we want to collect dues-another topic that needs discussion.)

Well said. And bear in mind, as I said earlier, that the historical weakness was that nothing ever went beyond discussion. That is the danger inherent in large committees and sometimes why people like a leader. Therefore, let’s have a small committee with majority voting with the criteria that our esteemed basement_shaman suggests. Once you are in you are in unless you let your membership lapse with a full years absence. I suggest membership can be granted, as suggested by BS, after one year and with regular contributions; quality not quantity. Committee to be voted in or out once a year by ISTA members. It would also be nice to have list of members somewhere on these pages.

Sounds good so far. I do prefer educate. I don’t really care if people use snuff as much as I care about proper awareness.

I have an opinion about the ‘promotion’ of snuff that I would like to see addressed, not in the mission statement, but certainly as a footnote. We all presumably offer snuff to non-snuffers as part of our personal desires to promote snuff. I feel a little evangelical about this myself. As a cigarette smoker, snuff has allowed me to cut down a great deal, and I know that one day I will be able to quit smoking altogether. I always try to introduce snuff to other smokers, and I like to think that this could literally save someones life. I know from reading forum posts that this view is shared by many other members. We should, however, temper this ‘promotion’ with the knowledge that snuff is a tobacco product, and as such is addictive. It also probably does have health implications, though obviously orders of magnitude lower than those of smoking cigarettes. I’d like to see a guideline discouraging members from actively offering snuff to people who don’t currently use tobacco. If a non-tobacco user asks me to try snuff in full knowledge of the possible drawbacks, that’s one thing. Trying to persuade a non-tobacco user to start using tobacco (in any form) is another thing entirely, and I believe that it would be unethical.

@doctorbeat that was one of my concerns as well. I feel though that promoting an understanding of snuff allows anyone to choose on their own whether it’s something they want or not. I would never suggest someone who does not already use tobacco to get into snuff. I think we all agree with that.

@doctorbeat I would assume that any member of this group would already possess that level of wisdom without it being stated. I could be wrong, but as members of ISTA we should be the wise/experienced types.

How are you guys getting to the ISTA category I’m not seeing it on the homepage or anywhere, the only way I can get here is through the notification I got for the roster

@n9inchnails I can see it fine on my end…I have been using my email notification links to bring me back, but it does show up on the front page.

It’s not showing up on my computer, maybe my membership hasn’t been activated or something

@doctorbeat I would assume that any member of this group would already possess that level of wisdom without it being stated. I could be wrong, but as members of ISTA we should be the wise/experienced types.

Indeed. But if it was stated explicitly as a policy of the organization, it would be good PR. Imagine what an anti-tobacco lobbyist or a hungry journalist would make of a policy to ‘promote’ snuff, no matter how carefully that policy was worded.

@doctorbeat I’d not disagree if the group felt better about having an explicit policy in place.

@n9inchnails The same thing happened to me - try logging out of Snuffhouse entirely and then logging in again.

^ didn’t work

@n9inchnails If you click the snuffhouse logo and scroll to the bottom of the page you don’t see it? Maybe you need to clear out your browser cache.

I am having the same issue. I was surprised to find it has been active for a few days after I was tagged and directed here via my notifications.

Has anyone not checked in? I wonder if others are having access issues. @khalid are you here? @snuffmiller?

Anybody keep in contact with Juxtaposer? He’s gone inactive for about 2 months after years of regular activity here.

Frankly I offer my snuff to anyone who is interested. A few people who aren’t regular tobacco users will take a pinch and enjoy it and not crave the snuff regularly. If we want to talk about addiction to nicotine it is important to realize that nicotine has varying levels of addicting properties for different people. It is not the nicotine that is addictive it is the nicotine and your brain chemistry that are addicting. Most people who are adults who don’t smoke probably don’t have the make up to be a nicotine addict. I say for offering snuff to people the only requirement is that their are legal to purchase or use the product where they live and are aware of facts about nicotine being addictive which have been drilled into their heads since they were too young to understand what was being talked about.

well, this must be the place … i am in. just got through this thread … did we agree on the mission statement? Koba’s streamlined, wordsmith’ed version gets my vote, if it hasn’t been voted yet. i had a lot more to say … just deleted it because it seems everyone is still trying to put a finer point on membership and all. which is good. and to what each of us should do to enhance the mission of this group, externally. but, as a matter of housecleaning in one post 1. i also vote B_Shaman as a spokesperson 2. i am up for paying dues, if we get there too. and i am honored to be part of this group. thanks for allowing me to roam the halls.