…compared to other forms of tobacco? I used to spend more on RYO in a coupla weeks than I’ll spend in a year on snuff! Not that I’m complaining, mind.

Snuff is not taxed.  I think this was an effort by the UK government to encourage snuff use over smoking due to lessened risk of health hazards.  Someone will assuredly correct me if I’m wrong.  =)

Here’s a good page regarding this topic.

http://www.snuffbox.org.uk/auth.html

Currently I am still smoking, and in my state my Marlboro smooths are $6.12 a pack. Hence why ordered an ungodly amount of Snuff lol. Fine with me. !!!

RYO is around

Highest I’ve paid in Seattle is $12 and change, but runs around $8-10 a pack most places outside of the city proper.  Crazy, and very hard to justify.

I’m 32. My Grandfather told me he quit smoking because it got too expensive… at $5 a carton!

Snuff is efficient. You don’t use much raw material. If we say that a reasonably greedy snuff user uses five grams a day – that’s about what I’m on – that’s about the same weight as two cigarettes. In Australia, where tobacco tax is calculated on the basis of weight, not as a proportion of the sales price, snuff is about the only affordable form of tobacco, although even then the tax far outweighs the product cost (Incidentally, that means that the cost of the most expensive premium snuffs is only marginally higher than the cheapest bargain basement product). I even saw a website that suggested saving money by making nasal snuff out of Lucky Strike no filters. You could do worse, I guess, but you can find much better tobacco around in my neck of the woods for a lower price. Incidentally, a pack of ciggies in Australia sets you back close to twenty bucks.

EDIT: Actually, weight-for-weight, snuff is one of the most expensive forms of tobacco. Abraxas and SWS are close to a dollar a gram. At that price, a pack of cigarettes would be fifty bucks. I don’t know what the per gram weight of a good Havana cigar is, interesting to hear from someone who knows.

You’re paying for time. Or at least I am, since it’s so easy to make a decent snuff I don’t think the mass producers can charge much more than they do now. As always small handmade artisanal products will always demand a premium, be it snuff or bread. But like bread while it’s hard to make some fancy artisanal loaf it’s incredibly easy to toss the ingredients together in a machine and get something decent all by yourself. So I don’t think snuff is cheap, nor expensive. They seem pretty fair.

Dunno what happened to my post starting ‘RYO is around’…must’ve passed out or summat. Anyway… here in the UK RYO is around

Is summat wrong with this site or my phone? My posts keep getting truncated!

@fj1988 if you use non-ascii characters the post gets truncated, I assume you were typing the pound sign? I don’t know why this is still happening, it should be an easy fix for them.

786  I was actually having the same problem a few days ago, also from my 'phone.  As soon as I typed a few capital letters in a row (I was trying to type NC Arya) the browser would crash.  This happened four times in a row.  I find it interesting that @fj1988 was also typing several capital letters in a row at the point where his posts were getting cut off.  

And there’s me thinking snuffhouse didn’t want me around anymore! Best keep things simple in future. Anyway… in England good roll-up baccy is around 18-19 pounds for 50g, your ‘average’ snuff is around 3 pounds and fifty pence for 25g. That makes snuff seem dirt cheap and roll-up tobacco horribly expensive, to me.

786 Eighteen pounds! That’s a king’s ransom!

Hey @slobandtom I’m sure you get this all the time but why the “786” on every post.

I figured ocd, 7 8 …

786 It’s kind of like how Thelemites use 93 and Discordians use 23. ( @SnuffSlinger, @snuffsahoy I’ll send a pm)

So… ocd then?

Other forms of tobacco are recognized vices, consequentially, the government taxes the crap out of them.

786 Then let’s hope our legislators remain uncultured Philistines and never read one of the many books from bygone eras which describe snufftaking as a vice! When I was a youth and came across such references I was always like, “vice!? They’re just sneezing!” (At the time I was biased by the pinch of Garrett my dad had given me from the back of his hand when I was eight or nine; therefore I believed that snuff was something one took in order to make oneself sneeze)

I’m hoping for a tepid resurgence. =)  Enough that we continue the trend of innovation and premium quality from the “new” guys like Old Mill and Abraxas… but not so much that we attract the ever-hungry eyes of the overlords.

Snuff may be inexpensive but to ship it from overseas is not.

I’ve got the best of both worlds - here in the UK snuff is cheap and the postage is peanuts. Please forgive my ignorance ( I’m new to this ) but is nasal snuff illegal / unobtainable in the States or something??

Snuff is not widely available in the retail space for much of the US.  Outside of the southeast, I’d say it’s officially rare.

I am the only snuff taker I know of IRL, and reactions from my fellow 'Muricans range from apprehensive curiosity, to outright distrust/disgust.  People seem to have hangups about things going in their nose, so I always ask them in return why they feel that imbibing combusted tobacco through their soft, no-longer-pink lungs is any less disturbing.  =)

@fj1988, I’ve never quite got to the bottom of it myself, but apparently there is an American law known as “the PACT Act” which forbids the transport of tobacco through the US postal service, with some weird exemptions for pipe tobacco and cigars and also not affecting shipments from overseas. It’s more or less legal to sell in shops, but hard to find because the market is small. Does that make sense now? No, me neither. But by all credible accounts, that’s the way it works.

I wonder if you could set up an online snuff shop in Puerto Rico or Mexico to get around this?

I recall hearing the reason USA can receive shipments of snuff from UK is due to an old treaty that says if it is legal to ship a product within either country, it is legal to ship between the countries.  All I know is… if I lose my Mr. Snuff I will be a very sad snuffer.

@jakartaboy @fj1988 with the PACT law it is illegal to ship smokeless tobacco or cigarettes via mail, full stop. However, the loophole is that there is no provision in the law for it to interfere with international shipping, so long as it is legal to ship tobacco via mail in the country of origin. That’s my understanding anyway. As for why not mexico or puerto rico. Puerto rico is a US territory governed by US federal law. Not sure about mexico, but I’m not sure I would want to be shipping powdered anything from there legal or not.

In the USA the PACT Act forbids USPS shipping and requires sellers to remit tobacco taxes for each city, county, state per order. All American sellers couldn’t handle the added paperwork. The law that gives the FDA authority over tobacco products killed most snuff B&M sales as the manufacturer is required to release a complete ingredient list for each recipe.Along with tons of paperwork( expensive and bothersome). Toque was the only snuff manufacturer willing to meet those requirements.  The American scotch snuff guys had no problems as they are owned by huge tobacco. 

@bigmick thanks for the explaination, makes much more sense than what I’d been told previously.

@SHbickel I’m not sure about the US but that is the treaty Canada has with the UK.  As long as it is legal to ship in the UK Canada Post has to deliver it even if the product is illegal in Canada.  I doubt the same is true for the US or all you Yankees would be ordering Cuban cigars from the UK.

The PACT Act outlawed the selling of tobacco online in the USA.

Mr. Snuff is the only online retailer in the USA who stayed in business (I think).

He got around the PACT Act by opening a branch in Ireland and selling snuff from Ireland rather than from Upstate New York.

Those who legislated The PACT Act probably didn’t even have an idea of what snuff was, but the wording of the law was so sweeping and all inclusive that it had, at least, a few unintended consequences.

Does vape juice fall under PACT as well?

I would NOT expect vaping to be covered by PACT act as it’s not a tobacco product.

^ actually Mr.Snuff was up and running in Ireland for at least a year before he bought snuffstore, I remember ordering from both.

786 I can confirm what @n9inchnails said; I too ordered from both before the PACT Act was ever introduced in the legislature. There are plenty of threads dealing with these issues.

Capitalism is the best economic system that money can buy.

Wouldn’t surprise me. Our Lord’s making loopholes in the wording of new laws to protect their interests while restricting ours is why we can order cigars, although I read somewhere they were considering defining the premium cigar clause to mean several things including cigars valued at at least $10 per. It’s for the children though so it’s OK to control my life.

As for the low tax (we still pay V.A.T.) in Britain, I’m sure it’s because of the low sales of snuff. If the treasury thought it could make a lot of money from snuff takers it would, not that I’m cynical or anything.

Snuff tobacco is so cheap only due to the fact that some Snuff manufacturers actually giving a shit about their customers. These companies offer snuff for a reasonable price and all other snuff manufactures have to keep similar costs to mainly stay in business (Nash’s Equilibrium). So due to these companies still caring about their customers all sides of the pond and refuse to drive up prices solely for profit regardless of the demand, which therefore keeps the prices low.

@Caudimordax  

    I may have misread you, but the last time I looked at the tobacco taxes on UGOV 

 ( for pople outside the UK,    UGOV is a government site to find out information on mosts things they have a finger in.  Driving tests, passports , taxes etc.)    tobacco snuff has no vat on it in the UK.

Allow me to be bold and suggest prices are low because supply exceeds demand. If I was a snuffmaker don’t think I’d happy making quality products and selling for such a low price.

@Hoffwell I remember even several years ago when researching American snuffs how a batch made lasts a year or more before they make another so I think you are spot on

An article from the Jan 10. 1857 issue of Scientific American could explain why:

“The Irish and Scotch snuffs are made from the stalks of the tobacco leaf, which, in truth, otherwise would be a waste product of [cigar] manufacture. When the tobacco leaf is made into cigars, the stalks and fibres are cut out of the leaf, otherwise it would not roll up properly; when these fibres have accumulated sufficiently, the snuff-making process is begun.”

I guess that explains also why some snuffs (like Toque SG) remind me of a cigar humidor.

snuff isn’t cheap it’s efficient. You get more of the nicotine out of it then you do when smoked or chewed. Imagine paying as much for ten grams of chewing tobacco as you pay for a ten gram tin of snuff.  Not only would you feel ripped off but you’d not get much out of it. Snuff ain’t cheap it’s just efficient.

Nearly $1000 per kilogram tax rate in Australia,if customs get hold of your package.

@spinyeel, holy crap!  so they’re economically banning it then.

One Aus Dollar at current rate is 0.57 GBP So tax on a 25g tin would be 14.25 GBP plus say three quid for the snuff = 17.25 GBP. Still cheaper than smoking and that 25g tin will last far longer than 25g of baccy.

But yes, 1000 Dollars per KG is outrageous.

@Roderick officially there where just too many cigars to put the resources towards. Unofficially it might have something to do with how many senators and others who should know better but have money and power where among the people getting the cigars.

@spinyeel another Aussy. I havent made an order recently, has it gone up to $1000 on the kilo. My last order 4 months ago the price was still at the $863 mark.
@Hoffwell are you an Aussy too? You forgot to include the 10% GST applied after the tobacco tax. Though yeah still works out cheaper than Ciggies unless you import.

Let’s not ask ourselves why snuff is so cheap, let’s just be happy that we can have a hobby that won’t break our wallets.

I live in Adelaide Aamon. All my nasal snuff orders seem to bypass customs,whereas nearly all my snus orders get pinged. 

@spinyeel ahahaha yea geez i’m Adelaide too, out Pasadena way. If you’re up for a trade let us know man, thats as local as it gets