All the kids are doing it

A small round tin is produced from the pocket.It’s about an inch and a half in diameter, with a green label bearing a German brand name. The top pops off with a twist, revealing the contents: a fine, dark brown powder. A pinch of powder is removed, brought to the nose and inhaled with a quick whiff.A bystander, watching from nearby, grows suspicious.“What is that, drugs?” he asks.Yes, and no.One of history’s most esoteric methods of satisfying a tobacco jones is making a resurgence as a new generation of hipsters trade lungs full of smoke for a nose full of snuff. lass="quote">Unlike dip, chew or “snus,” moist tobacco products that are ingested orally, dry snuff is made from tobacco leaves that have been ground into a fine powder. Pre-Columbian American inhabitants were the first known snuffers. It’s been used in Europe since the 1500s, mostly among the aristocracy, both for enjoyment and for its perceived medicinal properties. Use has declined sharply over the last hundred years, but the stuff is still around.Modern snuff comes in a variety of flavors. It is sniffed quickly into the nostrils, where it produces a stimulating burn — and a heady nicotine buzz — without the tobacco smoke that’s been banned from many public locations.“For most, snuff is an alternative to smoking,” says Alexander Schardt, a snuff lover from Hamburg, Germany, who runs the popular Snuffhouse.org discussion board. “People recognize cigarette smoking is unhealthy, and you can’t do it at work or a lot of other places.”Like trendy boozers pouring absinthe over antique spoons or rockabilly fans digging up vintage clothes and restoring classic cars, nasal snuff users are drawn in by an anachronistic habit with a colorful past. Decorative snuff boxes and fancy snuff bottles add to the international allure of an exotic vice with a fascinating history.With smoking banned in many bars and nightclubs — hangouts that once were synonymous with a haze of tobacco smoke — snuff, electronic cigarettes, and other smokeless methods of ingesting nicotine are growing in popularity. While these methods of consumption cut out the tar and carbon monoxide associated with smoking, they do not eliminate the addictive properties of nicotine, the stimulant found in tobacco.Though users rave about how benign snuff is, the substance’s safety as an alternative to cigarettes is largely untested. While users aren’t inhaling tar or producing second-hand smoke, definitive research on the safety of nasal snuff is lacking, mostly because dry snuff is such a microscopic segment of the tobacco market. Most studies in the United States and Europe have tended to focus on oral snuff, which is a known cause of mouth, head and neck cancers.The U.S. Surgeon General will not recommend dry snuff as a safe alternative to other tobacco products, and tins sold in this country bear the same warning stickers as oral snuff and other forms of smokeless tobacco. European snuff makers apply similar labels warning users of snuff’s damaging health effects and addictive properties. Studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have shown the use of smokeless tobacco products like snuff can lead to nicotine addiction, and that smokeless tobacco users are more likely to become cigarette smokers.According to a Federal Trade Commission report, roughly 20 million individual packages of dry snuff were sold in the United States in 2005, the last year for which such data is available. In the same year, roughly 17.7 billion packs of cigarettes were sold in the United States.Dry snuff’s popularity in the Western world peaked generations ago. Since then, it’s been seen primarily as an old man’s vice. For most, talk of the stuff conjures vague images of mustachioed Germans wearing tweeds and toting pocket watches, taking toots from a wooden snuff box after a hearty dinner of Weisswurst in some candlelit Munich den a century ago.“There’s still that image of the old guys in Bavaria,” says Schardt. “But it’s also being used by the younger guys in their 20s and early 30s.”