A newly popular alternative to cigarettes is changing the way many Americans consume nicotine—and becoming a political flashpoint.The product, a nicotine pouch, looks like a tiny tea bag and comes in flavors such as mint, coffee, berry and mango. It tucks discreetly into the cheek and doesn’t require the user to spit.
I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. Pulling hot smoke into your lungs always seemed like a bad idea. When I was young, I figured that lungs were moist, pink mucus membranes kind of like the inside of your mouth. Hot smoke would dry them out and damage them.
This was in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In movies from the 1950’s, cigarettes were occasionally referred to as “coffin nails”. Everyone knew that smoking was bad for you, they just didn’t care. When I was in high school, we had a smoking courtyard next to the cafeteria. It was mostly used by [pot] heads and burnouts. I don’t recall if people had to be 18 to buy cigarettes back then. I suspect they did, but nobody worried much about checking ID’s, and obviously fake ID’s were easily purchased from stores that took passport photos.
Both of my parents smoked. In health class, they showed us photos of a healthy lung compared to the lung of smoker. After telling my dad about how the smoker’s lungs looked like burned toast, he abruptly quit. No announcement or tapering off. He just stopped. My mom was always trying to quit. She tried hypnotism, acupuncture, listening to hypno-tapes while sleeping and every other approach that was offered. After a few days or weeks off of cigarettes, she’d wonder what a cigarette would taste like. She’d try one, it would taste great, and she’d be back to smoking. Mom got mean and nasty when she was quitting, so it was unpleasant for all of us.
Mom loved smoking. She didn’t quit until she had a heart attack resulting in a triple-bypass when she was 70. That didn’t make much sense to me. If she’d smoked for fifty years before needing medical intervention, she should be good for ten or twenty more years. That was more Mom’s logic, than mine, but I give her credit. She stuck to it.
Zyn has been on the U.S. market since 2014, but its sales have skyrocketed over the past year.
About a dozen years ago, I was looking for a new vice. Maybe if was a mid-life crisis. I wanted something mostly harmless and not too difficult that might change how I feel. After some research, I settled on Swedish snus. Scandinavians have been using snus for hundreds of years with little increase in any kind of cancer or other detrimental health outcomes. The only ingredients in traditional snus are tobacco and salt. The tobacco is steamed, and doesn’t produce the carcinogenic compounds found it cigarettes. It comes loose or in tiny pouches that are placed under the top lip and doesn’t require spitting.
Nicotine is addicting. Don’t care. I was in my fifties, and was feeling stressed, fat and fatigued. Nicotine gave a short little buzz and is an appetite suppressant. US health authorities hate the idea of nicotine, but there isn’t much evidence that it has any deleterious effects. Too much can cause nausea, but that’s it. Cigarettes are bad, nicotine is not. Perhaps because we could smoke in high school, I don’t worry much about students rebelling by vaping in school. Vaping always looks stupid and dip requires spitting, which is gross.
It made me feel a little sharper, and I liked the idea of doing something subversive while teaching.
At one point, my department chair came over for a chat and mentioned it in a clever way.
“One of your students thinks that you do dip.”
I was able to brush it off without admitting or lying, and I resolved to be more circumspect.
When I started, snus could be purchased online from Sweden. Because snus has a long tradition, there were hundreds of varieties. I enjoyed getting the variety packs to find brands I liked. I saw Zyn when it was introduced, but didn’t like the idea. It seemed too synthetic, like energy drinks compared to coffee.
After a few years, new regulations made it an expensive hassle to purchase nicotine products online. At about the same time, a few convenience stores started carrying a few General snus products. That’s a brand that I’d enjoyed, so buy it that way now. American tobacco companies also started making snus, but I don’t trust them.
The company [Philip Morris], which sells Marlboros and other cigarettes outside the U.S., acquired Zyn in its $16 billion takeover of smokeless-tobacco maker Swedish Match in 2022 and has expanded distribution of the product.
Swedish Match makes General snus, so I’m not nuts about them being bought out by Philip Morris. The optimistic view is that the Scandinavians will keep Swedish Match from getting corrupted by Morris and that Morris will get more traditional snus into stores.
Sin taxes are bullshit. I do my job better than the government does it’s job, so they should drop any effort to tell citizens how to live. Any danger that comes from people making imprudent decisions is dwarfed by the danger of government making those decisions for people.
Zyn isn’t a product for me, but it is much safer than cigarettes and you don’t look like a douche when you are doing it.