{"id":5188,"date":"2021-06-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snusforumet.se\/?p=5188"},"modified":"2021-09-16T12:10:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T10:10:11","slug":"snus-and-the-art-of-suppression-part-1-snus-if-you-can-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snusforumet.se\/en\/snus-and-the-art-of-suppression-part-1-snus-if-you-can-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Snus and the Art of Suppression: Part 1 – Snus: If you can, ban"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why is snus banned in the European Union? How did it happen? Snusforumet, in partnership with author and commentator Christopher Snowdon, brings you the inside story behind one of the EU’s more confounding policies. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For the next several weeks, Snusforumet will be publishing excerpts from the story behind the EU snus ban<\/em> as written in <\/em>The Art of Suppression: Pleasure, Panic and Prohibition since 1800, a 2011 book written by Christopher Snowdon.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Snusforumet subscribers get instant access to the whole story. Click here to subscribe to Snusforumet<\/a> and get the entire chapter on snus from <\/em>The Art of Suppression emailed straight to your inbox<\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Part 1 – Snus: If you can, ban<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProhibition is only feasible if relatively few people use a product.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Ann McNeill, 1990<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u00a3200,000 government grant to convert a disused clock factory into a smokeless tobacco warehouse unleashed a chain of events that led to one of the strangest and most self-defeating prohibitions in recent history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1985, United States Tobacco Inc. chose the economically depressed Scottish town of East Kilbride as its European base for the manufacture and distribution of Skoal Bandits,<\/em> a brand of smokeless tobacco that had been launched in the United States two years earlier. Looking to expand into Europe and the Middle East, the company selected East Kilbride because of \u201cthe valuable incentives provided by the Scottish Economic Planning Board, the available labor force and the plant\u2019s proximity to the Company\u2019s developing markets.\u201d This, it said, \u201cenables US Tobacco to provide the freshest possible product at an affordable price.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skoal Bandits<\/em> were not, however, products that everyone wanted to see available at any<\/em> price. The product consisted of moist, fine-cut tobacco contained in what looked like small, rectangular tea-bags. Low in nicotine, sweetly flavoured and with a masked cowboy emblazoned on each container, Skoal Bandits<\/em> were accused of being aimed at teenagers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain, unlike America, had little experience of using chewing and dipping tobacco and the nation\u2019s public health campaigners wanted to keep it that way. US Tobacco\u2019s arrival in Britain suddenly alerted the guardians of the nation\u2019s health to the fact that since Skoal Bandits<\/em> were designed to be neither smoked nor chewed, a legal loophole allowed them to be sold to children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the leadership of the state-funded anti-smoking pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), and aided by the fleeting fury of the tabloid press, the medical profession campaigned first for a ban on sales to minors and then for the complete prohibition of oral snuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 1985, the Scottish MP John Home Robertson introduced a private member\u2019s bill to ban the sale of all tobacco products to persons under the age of 16. \u201cWould \u2018all tobacco products\u2019 include the infernal Skoal Bandits<\/em>?\u201d enquired fellow Scot Norman Godman MP. Indeed it would, replied Robertson, who described the infernal Bandits<\/em> as…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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