Mick Hellwig: Snus, Snuff, & Stuff

Dear Tobacco Sirs and/or Madam(s),

If you are considering making a product called “snus”… Don’t! Please do not follow the path of RJ Reynolds, Phillip Morris USA and the rest. Do not market a product called snus altered to fit American tastes and intentionally very low in free nicotine.

Many hundreds of thousands of Americans like snus as it has been made for over 200 years. If we wanted sweetened, flue cured, oral tobacco we already have a wonderful thing called dip, snuff, or more accurately American smokeless tobacco.

Snus should not be sickly sweet. Snus should be either a tad salty or a lot salty depending on other flavorings. If you want to make American style smokeless tobacco, then do that and call it what it is. What I have seen from you on the American market so far is not real snus, regardless of the name on the can/tin/stupid plastic envelope.

If you plan to make “snus” at least buy as much advice, training and equipment from people in Sweden who have been making pasteurized real snus since 1822.  Denmark is a good role model too.  Then follow through and don’t screw it up in practice as is the case today.

Read more: An Open Letter to the American Tobacco Companies

This time last year I lost my job; Feb 20th to be exact. Within days the boredom and my OCD kicked in and I disposed of almost all my empty snus cans. I only kept a few “special” cans. PM1847, Camel SNUS, metal Lucky Strike…stuff I thought may be collectible some day. A couple months ago I realized I had saved almost every snus can I have used since that day. Not having thought up a good use for them I figured they would make an interesting article topic.

Read more: A Year of Snus - a Personal Case Study of 2009

My other passions in life, beyond nicotine, my lovely wife and kids, are firearms and the politics involved.  I am a certified gun nut. I vote mainly based on where a candidate is on the Second Amendment. I have been involved in the political battle for gun rights since I was a child.  My father was great at math but bad with words, so he would have me spell words that he was actually writing in a letter to his Congress critters. For those of you old enough to remember that would have been Howard Metzenbaum.

I am well acquainted with politicians ignoring us and how that particular fight has gone over the years. I will not go meekly. I have seen these same tactics before and know how they are being beaten. Unfortunately I also know how they are being used against us.   There are many parallels between the War on Tobacco and the War on Guns.

Read more: Tobacco, Guns, and Money

Not long ago someone commented that I didn't like Swedish Match products.  I was shocked.  Firstly because I love a bunch of Swedish Match tobacco products: Snus and Nasal Snuff both. Secondly because I thought he knew me better than that. A quick count of my Stash o' Snus gives me 18 cans of SM snus and 11 cans of V2, with a 2 each of Gotlands and F&L. (I did not count Mrs Mick's collection of minis.) I also did not realize I was that low on snus...time to give SnusCentral some money.

Swedish Match makes 3 of my top 5 snus brands, Tre Ankare, Ettan and Nick & Johnny Black.  They make really cool stuff like the Carbon Fiber snus can and available in the very near future the Bullet-Proof can.  They also make the real subject of this article:

Read more: Some love for Swedish Match