Joseph Hart 11 June 2024

 

Does anyone remember snuff, the smokeless tobacco product that you could snort? I haven’t thought about it in years, but I remember there were tins of the stuff floating around after Ireland banned smoking in pubs. For a while, you could barely go for a pint in Dublin without someone offering you a pinch of the dried tobacco product.

It was pleasant enough, but it didn’t take off for me or my friends for a few reasons:

  • It was illegal to do it inside pubs for some reason.
  • There were concerns about what it might do to your nasal cavity.
  • All the fun people were outside smoking.

Now, make no mistake, Ireland has terrible weather. But the hastily constructed smoking areas outside pubs with their outdoor heaters made it manageable. Or, with enough drinks, positively tropical.

Iceland, on the other hand, is a bit colder, with average winter temperatures of 0°C. It takes real commitment to leave the warmth of the pub and have a smoke outdoors at freezing point.

This dynamic partly explains why snuff took off in Iceland. The other thing is that credible alternatives, like snus, were banned. However, because Iceland began producing snuff in the early 1940s, you could buy that. This is where things get interesting.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one who wasn’t wild about snorting tobacco. While snuff use rose in popularity, peaking around 2019, many enterprising Icelanders were taking it orally. To do this, they’d roll it in a ball and place it under the lip or make snus-like parcels.

To me, this is a clear example of how regulations fail the consumer. There is an apparent demand for smokeless tobacco in Iceland, but citizens need to go to absurd lengths to get what they want. Even weirder, the Icelandic government would rather see its people rail tobacco up their noses rather than take it orally.

The market responds

Thankfully, nicotine pouches came along to offer a solution for people who would have used snus if it were legal. The result is a product that is cheaper, healthier, and a lot less messy. And wouldn’t you know it, snuff use has declined dramatically in the region. Indeed, in the last five years, snuff use has declined by almost 80% in Iceland, with the State Alcohol and Tobacco Company of Iceland (ÁTVR) citing nicotine pouches as the primary driver of these changes.

The sad part about this story is that, per this article, the ÁTVR believe that the trend will continue downward and ultimately lead to the discontinuation of snuff production in Iceland. This will lead to a tax deficit for the Nordic island nation and job losses for people with mortgages and families.

High inflation, economic uncertainty, and tourism-hampering volcanic risk have already hurt Iceland. It’s not the sort of market that anyone wants to be job hunting in. The ÁTVR could have avoided this by listening to what the market wanted and pivoting to snus or nicotine pouches.

Final thoughts

Snuff is far less lethal than combustible cigarettes. Icelanders know this because their smoking prevalence rates have dropped from 30% in 2000 to around 12% today. Only about 4% of Icelanders vape, so we can safely say that snuff, and now nicotine pouches, have had a transformative effect on the island.

This is just another example of a government that is out of tune with its people, leaving the market to step up and solve the problem.