How snus came to sweden
The Swedish snus has a tradition which stretches over 150 years. Originally snus came to Europe thanks to the discovery of America by Columbus.
In America, Columbus met a people that were chewing or smoking an odd leaf plant, tabago. However, it took a long time for Europeans to get interested
in the tobacco. It was only when the smelling snuff was introduced at the French court that the interest in snuff arose. Snuff was now attributed medicinal
properties and became the highest fashion among the courts of Europe. This led to that snus finally found it´s way to Sweden.
For 200 years ago it
was unusual with fresh food in Sweden. The diet at the time mainly consisted of salted and sour food which was often washed down with alcohol.
Interestingly enough, it was precisely at that time that the Swedes started to produce the moist and aromatic snus. Snus combined with coffee largely
replaced the high consumption of alcohol as a stimulant at this time.
There were a lot of snus manufacturers and even more recipes at this time.
Snus was flavoured with figs, malt, wine and syrup among other things.The tobacco used were of very low quality and today's snusers would hardly
recognize his or her favorite snus if they got a taste of this early product. But it was then the Swedish snus tradition began and developed in to the product we now recognize as snus.
In 1914 the Swedish government decided on
a introducing a tobacco monopoly. From the middle of the 1920 to the middle of 1940s the tobacco monopoly stood for more then 10 percent of Sweden’s
revenue. Snus consumption steadily increased during the early years of 1900s and reached it peak in 1919. During this year the Swedes consumed 6 993 tons
of snus. But after this record year consumptions steadily decreased for until the end of the 1960’s.
During the late 60´s the snus consumption increased
again. One explanation could be the alarming rapports about the dangers of smoking and the connections between smoking and cancer. This could very well
have led to that many smokers started using snus instead of cigarettes.
In the early 1970´s the first portion snus was introduced. This brand was
called Smokeless but it was not a commercial hit and it was abandoned in 1979. But at this time the portion brand Tre Ankare had been launched and the
portion snus was here to stay. Today the portion snus is even more popular than the loose snus. The invisibility and the cleanliness of the portion snus
could very well be two of the factors behind its popularity.
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