Camel Snus

Since high school, I have smoked off and on.  Typically, I will get stressed at work, or perhaps I will be out having cordials with my fellow raconteurs at the salon and I will pick up a pack.  Over the next two weeks, I’ll chip away at it until I am convinced that I have finally hooked myself, and continue smoking for about a month or so until I become completely disgusted with cigarettes, and won’t have another for six months.  My one and only experience with dip ended like a scene from Requiem for a Dream, and I’ve never really had any desire to revisit it.  And traditional chewing tobacco has always been rendered null and void by memories of my toothless Okie grandfather, sitting in his armchair with a pouch of Levi Garrett and the saliva-encrusted creamed corn can he used for a spittoon; a tangible, living cautionary tale warning me less about the effects of chaw and more about becoming a terrifying, mumbling hillbilly.

Snus is not a product I would ever consider buying on my own, but this past week saw the NX35 music festival here in Denton, and Camel joined the festivities as a sponsor.  They flooded the clubs with reps, and set up a rave tent where all you had to do was show proof that you were 18, and you could literally have as much free tobacco as you wanted.  The catch was, most of the free product took the form of Snus, which NO ONE wanted.  With good reason.  But I decided to try it, in the name of science.  It’s a baffling product, on several levels.

1) It’s kind of creepy and gross. When you crack open the (admittedly neat) tin of Snus, you are met with these little brown tea-baggy pouches full of powdered tobacco and God knows what else.  The instructions tell you to stick it under your upper lip and wait for a tingle.  And by ‘tingle’, they are referring to the burning sensation you feel in your gums which then transforms into a deep tooth-ular throbbing.

2) It’s been banned by the European Union. I live in America, so at first it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but think about it:  EVERYTHING IS LEGAL SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE.  What does that say about a product when even Germans are like “No thank you, Herr Joe Camel.”?  Have you seen their pornography?

Just saw 'Auf Weiner-sehen 27'.

3) It tastes awful. Snus comes in several flavors, and I tried the ‘Mellow’ and ‘Frost’ varieties.  I went with Frost first, since I figured that it was going to be awful no matter what, but perhaps some mint would make it slightly less horrid.

WRONG.

I’ll save you the suspense and tell you Frost is by far the greater of the two evils.  The mint is only academically so, in that it provides a cooling, faintly refreshing element to accompany the formation of oral lesions.  The cloying sweetness invades every part of your mouth, sticking around long after you’ve wrested the mystery pouch from your gums. According to the packaging, “spitting is not necessary”, but I would recommend it, unless you’re interested in feeling the trademark Snus ‘tingle’ all the way down to your pyloric sphincter.

Mellow was considerably more tolerable, since it barely has any taste at all.  There is a faint taste of fake vanilla, but beyond that, it just sits there not really bothering anyone.  Which brings us to…

4) The shit doesn’t work. I have almost no tolerance for nicotine at all.  Unless I’m drinking, I physically cannot handle smoking more than a single cigarette in an hour.  I get super light-headed and nauseous, and break out into a cold sweat for about 10-15 minutes.  So when I was told a pouch of Snus has the equivalent nicotine of one and a a half cigarettes, I was more than a little wary.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that Snus had zero effect on me.  I didn’t feel any kind of buzz, or rush, or any other pleasant effect.  I just felt kind of like an asshole, sitting around for half an hour with this gross soggy bag humping my teeth.

So there you go.  All that to say R.J. Reynolds basically mouth-raped me.

Score

Camel Frost and Mellow Snus gets 0 out of 5.