American moist snuff or "dip" is made of fermented and fire cured tobacco. This process creates a rather harsh product. Due to this harshness, the juice created when using dip must be expectorated or spit out.
Swedish Snus undergoes a much different process. The tobacco used for snus is all air cured or sun cured. The tobacco farmers let the leaves dry naturally either out in the open or in humidity controlled rooms.
Once the Swedish tobacco companies receive the dried leaves they are very finely ground, not cut, and steam pasteurized. The pasteurization process is approved for food use.
This brings me to the next, and probably biggest difference between Snus and American Snuff.
The Swedish Government requires that snus be approved as a food product. Therefore it has to be generally recognized as safe for human consumption.
The pasteurization process kills most of the harmful bacteria in tobacco that have been attributed to cancers.
The fact that the tobacco is not cured using flame or intense heat, ensures that there are also far fewer of these chemicals present in the first place.
The snus cans are then sealed and stored cold, to ensure that they remain as fresh and safe as they were in the factory.
If the fact that snus is safe isn't awesome enough, it also doesn't require spitting! Thats right no spitting. Snus is used in the upper lip instead of the lower lip or cheek. There is less moisture produced up there, so it doesn't create that much juice to begin with. However the juice, or drip can be swallowed without issue.
If you think that all of this is a load of crap, check out my snus/health page.
Smokeless tobacco as a whole is generally regarded as at least 90% safer than smoking cigarettes. The reason being that it is not combusted, saving you from all kinds of nasty byproducts and *gasp* radiation.
Snus is as much as 99% safer than smoking due to the way it is processed. In fact a lot of the research cited on my health page shows a higher correlation of statistics between non-users of tobacco and snus users, than snus users and smokers or even other smokeless tobacco users.
If that isn't exciting enough; snus gets even more complicated.
Basically you have two main types of snus.
Loose snus is straight up moist tobacco. It is used by forming it into a prilla or pris, basically a smallish cylinder or ball, and placing it in the upper lip.
Portion snus is pre-packed into small teabag like pouches. These are also placed in the upper lip, but are much more convenient and clean.
The only other thing you need to know is that portions come in different varieties
Original Portions and White portions are the main variation.
Original Portions are sprayed with a little water before packaging so they are quite moist.
this extra moisture causes them to release their flavor much more quickly. This type of portion is my preference(usually)
White Portions skip the last step in manufacturing. They are not sprayed with water, so the outside of the portion material is dry. Fret not the tobacco inside is still moist. They do not release flavor as quickly, but the flavor lasts longer. They also don't "drip" as much.
Mini Portions are half the size of a regular or "large" portion they only contain about 0.5g of tobacco whereas a normal portion contains < > 1g of tobacco.
Mini Portions are also available as original or white portions
Long Portions are a new variation. They are longer and slimmer than a standard or "large" portion and have a moisture level somewhere between an original and white portion. I really like long portions. They fit really well in your lip and really are the best of both worlds.
Strength
If you get into snus you will also realize that it comes in different strengths or nicotine content.
Standard snus is 8mg/g of nicotine this means there are 8 mg of nicotine per gram of snus. This goes for portions and loose.
Stark/Sterk snus contains between 9-13mg/g of nicotine
Extra/Ekstra Sterk snus contains between 14-22mg/g of nicotine
That should be all you need to know about snus to get started.
Happy Snusing!
