Published by The Hospital Club
It's minus 28 degrees centrigrade and I'm sitting, alone, on a playground swing in a Swedish village, feeling extremely unusual.
Part of the reason for my decision to take a solo walk into the far-below-freezing cold is the high levels of Swedish schnapps in my blood stream. Another part is that, ten minutes ago, I wasn't paying close enough attention to my friends.
The final, vital ingredient to my downfall is a product that Marlboro and others hope will be the saviour of the international tobacco industry in these heady, smoke-free days. It's called Snus, and even independent medical research can't find much wrong with it.
Rewind half an hour. It's New Year's Eve. I'm visiting friends in a tiny dot near a slightly larger dot, 100 miles away from another dot, which is just off the main highway to Gothenburg. Sweden's like that. I'm with some friends, at a restaurant owned by a friend of theirs, and we've all had quite a lot to drink. In the silences between our ramblings, we can hear the nearby rhythmic thump of some music. "Hey, shall we pay them a visit?" asks someone, possibly me.
The neighbours, it turns out, are having a nylon tracksuit party.
A phrase you never want to hear, let alone a thing to witness, but it's true. We enter, trying desperately not to let our faces react to the costumes around us, and grab one of their bottles to help us. Before long a small tin is being passed around. "What's this?" asks I. "Snus, [Sch-noos]" replies someone. I peer into the tin. A collection of small rectangular teabags stare back, unblinking. I take one, and watch carefully as our brightly nyloned host slides a small snus bag of his own against his gum behind his upper lip. I do the same.
Snus, I now know, is steam-cured tobacco, flavourings, sodium carbonate to prevent caking and mould growth, and salt. The salt draws saliva into your mouth, which mixes with the tobacco up against your gum, where the blood stream is particularly close to hand, creating a buzz and a trickle of thin tobacco juice that oozes down your throat. Europe banned it in 1992, but the Swedes are so crazy for the stuff, they demanded (and got) a specific exception for snus in the European Union Membership treaty, before they'd sign it.
As an occasional party smoker, it gives me a bit more buzz than a simple ciggie, though I can't seem to help but probe the tiny tea bag with my tongue, moving it around my teeth and mouth, while desperately trying not to swallow the thing.
"Hey," calls my friend a little later. "Fancy a smoke?"
I stop my highly focused game of tiny tea bag tongue tennis, stare up at him and shrug. "Sure." I'm an occasional party smoker, after all, and if this was how one snus-ed, I should get the full experience. I join a few of them out on the balcony, take a cigarette and start to smoke it. A couple of minutes later, all of my internal organs seem a little upset with each other, and are trying to swap places. I don't feel well.
"Erm," I suggest.
The others look at me.
"I think this snus thing is a bit strong for me. You know, combined with the cigarette."
They keep looking at me, but their expressions have changed from friendly curiousity to the kind of look you might give to an unexpected bear.
"Andrew..." says a betracksuited Swede, "...we all spat ours out. You don't smoke with that thing in."
I consider his words, nod slowly, hand my cigarette to a nearby hand, spit out the snusbag into a bystanding ashtray and wobble off in the direction of the snow. They leave me to it.
Which is why I am sitting on a swing in minus 28, shortly before midnight on New Year's Eve, waiting for the tiny dots to disappear from my eyes and stomach.
Today, I live in the USA, and snus has tracked me down. Sensing a second-hand-smoke-free opportunity, Camel Snus has just gone nationwide, with ads in Rolling Stone and and Maxim. Marlboro Snus is now on trial in Indianapolis and Dallas. An article was recently published about it in the New York Times. Like chewing tobacco but spitless, like snuff but snortless, even years of rigorous Swedish government-sponsored trials have failed so spectacularly to link it to cancer that snus tins only carry the vague suggestion "May affect your health negatively".
I haven't snus-ed since that night, and won't be doing so in a hurry, but it may just become a big thing over here, where the European snus ban doesn't apply. Perhaps even Europe will relent some day. I say, if you're at all tempted, then go for it. It's certainly more pleasant and cheaper than Nicorette. Just remember the lesson I learned the hard way: You don't smoke with that thing in.