As some of you know, I am new to snuff, just started using it last month. I've started taking snuff about 10 times a day now, I don't know alot about it and I am interested in knowing how safe it really is. I hear alot of talk about people quiting smoking and using snuff, is that just replacing a bad habit with another? If you don't want to make a big long post, I would love to just see some websites about the risks involved in snuff taking. Anyways, I do enjoy snuff and don't plan on stopping any time soon.

If you took snuff 50 times or 100 times a day you would still be better off than smoking cigarettes. There is a major reduction in harm to your body. That said, some people will tell you there is no measurable risk, but if they are selling snuff, do take that into consideration.

The Toque Tobacco website has some excellent links to health articles. Personally I found them very reassuring. What you make of them is entirely up to you.

Bear in mind, nothing is absolutely safe. One could choke to death on a fish bone. Is it safe to eat fish? It is for most people. If you happen to be allergic to fish one bite could put you into anaphylactic shock. Without immediate medical intervention, you die. Is it safe to eat fish? It is for most people. How safe is it really? I imagine far more people die of anaphylactic shock and choking every year than all the deaths from snuffing since the beginning of time.

These persistent posts about "Snuff Dangers" are a bit of an irritation to at least some of us. It's a wet blanket on our snuff party. We are biased here, in favor of snuff. If you are uneasy about using snuff, it may not be for you. This is not the place to wring your hands about the dangers of snuff.

It is funny talking about bias, yes we are biased for snuff here, but anyone that tells you that snuff is dangerous is also showing bias. What I do is whenever I read an article or something about the dangers of snuff I just look for numbers or any sort of facts. So far everything that I have read about nasal snuff that is negative, the argument is "tobacco is bad", end of story. Nothing else. If it really carried much of a risk, even though not a whole lot of people use it anymore, there would be something, even something dating back many many years.

The idea of living ones life in a protective bubble is completely abhorrent to me. We all take risks everyday of our lives. The sensible thing to do is assess those risks and reduce them where we can. My passions are motor sport, shooting and wine and I don’t plan on dying doing any of them. In moderation the wine might even help me live longer. I plan to abseil from Table Mountain in South Africa when I’m 50 and I also plan to check and double check the safety ropes.

Yes we need more research, there’s a lot out there already, but we need more. The Royal college of Physicians said snuff was “between 10 and a 1000 times safer than smoking”. Most medical associations are in agreement that snuff dramatically reduces the risk of tobacco related illness, but none has come up with an actual figure. At the end of the day it is probably impossible to reach an exact figure, what we do know is it’s safer than smoking.

My company was described recently, by a director of one of the anti-smoking organisations, as an ethical tobacco company and the only one whose literature they could actually use. But even with that praise, I’m know I’m still going to be biased. It’s only natural; I want to sell more snuff!

I don't agree and I'm tempted to go further and say snuff could actually be “healthy”. Scientific evidence is now proving that nicotine helps prevent the onset and slows down the development of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cognitive abilities, Tourette's and ulcerative colitis.
Below are excerpts from some recent articles and studies on nicotine and its benefits in, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cognitive abilities, Tourette's and ulcerative colitis.

"In human studies, reported performance improvements with post-trial administration of nicotine have all involved associated learning (Mangan and Golding l883; Colrain et al, l992; Warburton et al, l992).... Nicotine improves performance by increasing the attentional resources available for such strategic processing," [Rusted JM, et al, "Facilitation of memory by post-trial administration of nicotine: evidence for attentional explanation," Psychopharmacology, 108(4):452-5, l992].
"1. Nicotine improves attention in a wide variety of tasks in healthy volunteers.
2. Nicotine improves immediate and longer-term memory in healthy volunteers.
3. Nicotine improves attention in patients with probable Alzheimer's Disease," [Warburton D M, "Nicotine as a cognitive enhancer," Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 16(2): 181-91, Mar l992]
"Researchers observed lessening of tic frequency and severity 3 minutes after subjects chewed [nicotine] gum, even more so at 10 minutes." [Rickards E H, "Nicotine gum in Tourette's disorder," American Journal of Psychiatry, 149(3):417, Mar l992. Note: the subjects were all children with Tourette's disorder].
"In humans, nicotine-induced improvement of rapid information processing is particularly well documented.... Preliminary studies have found that some aspects of the cognitive deficit in Alzheimer's disease can be attenuated by nicotine." [Levin E D, "Nicotinic systems and cognitive function," Psychopharmacology, 108(4):417-31, l992]
"Improvement in attention, learning, reaction time, and problem solving have been reported.... Different processes, including attention, stimulus evaluation, and response selection, appear to be involved in the effect of nicotine on human information processing." [Le Houezec J, Benowitz N L, "Basic and clinical psychopharmacology of nicotine," Clinics in Chest Medicine, 12(4):681-99, Dec l991].
"Despite the absence of change in memory functioning, these results demonstrate that DAT [Alzheimer's disease] patients have significant perceptual and visual attentional deficits which are improved by nicotine administration." [Jones G M, Sahakian B J, et al, "Effects of acute subcutaneous nicotine on attention, information processing and short-term memory in Alzheimer's disease," Psychopharmacology, 108(4):485-94, l992].
"When you look at people who smoke, and people who don't smoke...you find those who smoke cigarettes are about half as likely to get Parkinson's disease." [Dr. David Morens of the University of Hawaii School of Public Health as quoted in "Stunned docs discover cigarettes stop Parkinson's," by Roger Field, New York Post, 6/15/95. Dr. Morens and colleagues examined 34 studies on smoking and Parkinson's. Their study was published in the June, l995 issue of Neurology].
According to a study conducted at Surrey University and published in the journal Psychopharmacology, smokers are more mentally alert at night than non-smokers. Rosemary Brook, spokeswoman for Surrey University's psychopharmacology unit, said, "The results showed that smokers were subsequently able to perform various tests of reaction, memory recall and other related tasks consistently better than the non-smokers," [Reported on the BBC News, 4/8/98, "Cigarettes 'keep you sharp after dark'."
In a presentation at the 151st annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (June 8, l998 in Toronto), Dr. Paul Newhouse of the University of Vermont reported on his research on treating Parkinson's disease with nicotine. "Preliminary analysis shows improvements after acute nicotine administration in several areas of cognitive performance." These areas included reaction time and central processing speed. The researchers also reported that after chronic use of nicotine on Parkinson's patients, motor function and the ability to move also improved. [Reported by Reuters, 6/8/98, "Nicotine patch promising for Parkinson's"].
"The influence of smoking on the risk of developing ulcerative colitis is well documented. Compared with lifetime nonsmokers, the risk is reduced in smokers...." [Tysk C, Jarnerot G, "Has smoking changed the epidemiology of ulcerative colitis?" Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, 27(6):508-12, Jun l992].
"When association between cigarette smoking and UC [ulcerative colitis] are examined, never-smokers are approximately three times more likely to develop UC than smokers. A consistent finding from study to study is that quitters have a mildly increased risk of developing UC which suggests that cigarette smoking may have a protective effect," [Lashner B A, "Inflammatory bowel disease: family patterns and risk factors," Comprehensive Therapy, 18(8):2-4, Aug l992].
"It is beyond doubt that smokers are protected against ulcerative colitis, and the more that is smoked the greater the protection--so those on 25 cigarettes a day or more have a risk as little as one-tenth that of non-smokers," (Dr. Martin Osbourne, surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital in London, as quoted in the Daily Telegraph, 9/7/93).
I would also say that according to Robert S Brynin in his book "How Can You Expect to Stop Smoking if you Eat Tomatoes", tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and egg plants all have similar levels of TSNA‘s and are as addictive as cigarettes, If that is so then snuff must be virtually harmless and certainly no more harmful than tomatoes.

Aaah, who cares! I'm going to be dead soooooooooo long. Even if I live the healthiest (whatever that is) lifestyle I'm still going to be gone in the blink of an eye, historically speaking. I might as well have some slight enjoyment.

I would boil it down to this: if you worry, stop doing it, if you don't, enjoy it.

out of curiosity, what was your chemistry professor teaching you to make?

It's still safer then a cell-phone.

bob

It's still safer then a cell-phone.

agreed.

Definatly safer then drinking a diet soda or the tele-tubies too.

Thats, what I tried to say Alex. Just with your words it sounds better ;)

@Boobah204
Nothing special. It just occured in a general discussion about substances.