[embedding-shape]

Is your problem with them that they're synthetic, or that it's nicotine? Pouched tobacco like that been used for decades in some places in the world, or even without pouches, just making your own ball and sticking the tobacco under your lip. I'm not sure these countries have a higher rate of GI/gut problems than other places, which kind of would invalidate your entire argument here.

[seethishat]

My problem is it is an experiment (synthetic nicotine that is socially acceptable) and kids are addicted to it. It's like candy. No one knows or complains because the users are not generating smoke, vapor or spit. They just swallow the synthetic nicotine.

Yes, people have used tobacco products for a long time. However, they have not sucked on them like candy and swallowed the contents 16 hours a day. They spit, exhaled, etc. Chewing tobacco and snuff are not acceptable and they ruin your teeth/gums. Smoking is not acceptable and it ruins your lungs/breathing ability. This stuff is socially OK, because no one can tell you are using it (no spit or smoke).

Check out all the reports of GI issues on reddit (QuittingZyn). This stuff causes all sorts of GI issues from the top of the stomach to the bottom of the bowel.

[mapt]

Spitting was necessary because swallowing tobacco represents an immediate, acute food poisoning issue due to the other chemicals present. It's also all sorts of cancerous, including to the mouth, also due to those other chemicals.

We developed, in Snus, an apparently cancer-free chewing tobacco. We developed, in Zyn, a cancer-free, hygienic chewing tobacco with fewer GI issues. We developed, in e-cigarettes / vapes, a cancer-free, COPD-free, carbon monoxide free cigarette.

These should be regarded as public health miracles even if there remain some symptoms of partaking. If 80% of the population is addicted to Zyn or vapes but there are no smokers, you get far better health outcomes than a situation where 20% of the population are smoking and 5% are chewing.

[GeoAtreides]

It's comments like this that makes HN what it is. I am absolutely in awe and I applaud you good sir, this is truly a masterpiece.

[embedding-shape]

> However, they have not sucked on them like candy and swallowed the contents 16 hours a day.

Again, maybe not where you are, but there are definitively countries where both adults and children have tabacco under their lip for most of their waking hours, with no spitting or exhalation involved, as they're inside school/offices, can't really just spit there, even the non-synthetic stuff, as that's relatively new.

Zyn is specifically synthetic isn't it? You still seem to be mostly focused on synthetic nicotine, but the same behavior been observed for many, many decades with non-synthetics too.

[pessimizer]

> However, they have not sucked on them like candy and swallowed the contents 16 hours a day.

Swedish Snus has been around a long time, isn't linked to cancer at all, and has no bad effect on your teeth and gums. Snus is actually associated with vast drops in cancer rates, because it usually replaces smoking. Snus is also no-spit - I think the difference between it and chewing tobaccos is that they are roasted and that snus is steamed. Makes a huge difference healthwise.

I don't have anything to say about the synthetic stuff, I'm not familiar. It's a bizarre industry that cropped up during a period where snus was trying to get into the market and the tobacco companies were trying to keep them out.

Somehow, cigarette companies lobbied to get snus caught up in cigarette taxes, even without the actual health risk. They were only even required to put the weakest possible warning on the package, because the health effects of snus have been well-studied and they're not associated with anything serious, except for nicotine addiction itself (which makes it a good substitute for smoking.)

The big US cigarette companies marketed a few horrible "snus" lines, with the marketing and goal that they would be a replacement product for when a smoker couldn't take a smoke break, and they were weak. I assume these synthetic lines developed to avoid taxes in some way by pretending to be a sort of medical product rather than a tobacco product, like a nicotine gum.

Snus is actually a better Nicorette, I suspected that the nicotene replacement industry had something to do with the sabotage of snus. Snus is cheap, free of health consequences, and doesn't lead you to associate something as addictive as chewing with nicotine consumption. Snus just quietly sits behind your lip, the minis are undetectable by the people you're interacting with, and they smell nice so they don't ruin your breath. Why would you choose a more expensive synthetic alternative?

[irishcoffee]

Zyn has been around for well over 10 years. We would be seeing this gut thing you talk of by now I would think.

[DanielHB]

Snus (tobacco pouches you put under your gums) is super popular in Sweden:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus

It is basically the same thing but not synthetic. Supposedly nicotin pouches are not as harmful because they do not have tobacco leaves.

I am a bit ambivalent about it, on one hand people don't smoke as much because snus which means I don't get as much second hand smoke.

On the other hand it is WAY easier for kids to get started on it as they don't need to hide it after they put it in their mouths. I know a few people who are heavily addicted to it (one even keeps one in when he is sleeping) and they all started in their early teens.

[embedding-shape]

Exactly what I'm talking about, just didn't want to name it by name as people have a lot of preconceived notions about it that pops up as soon as you say "snus", for some reason.

[DanielHB]

I never heard about it causing GI problems, but snus definitely causes major teeth and gum problems. The guy I mentioned had his gums receded completely, he once showed it to me. It was very bizarre.

Also see this other comment on this thread about this issue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411778

[throwaway173738]

You customarily spit out that saliva that’s been in contact with your dip. Swallowing it is way worse for you. When I framed houses the guys that chewed would leave a little trail of brown spots everywhere.

[embedding-shape]

> You customarily spit out that saliva that’s been in contact with your dip

I don't think this is necessarily true everywhere/for everyone, it's really not common in Sweden to walk around spitting just because you have tobacco under your lip, as people sit in offices and stuff with this in their mouth, can't really go around a spit indoors.

[vel0city]

I can't speak for Sweden (I've never been), but typically all the people I've known in the US who dip regularly can be found with some kind of fast food cup they carry around with them as their "dip cup". It'll look like they're just taking a swig of some random drink, but in reality they're spitting.

[embedding-shape]

Yeah, that used to be common in the rural/country-side maybe 30 years ago or so in Sweden, you'll see zero people walking around in offices spitting in cups in Sweden today, although tons of people use (synthetic and non-synthetic) snus all the time.

[esseph]

I used to have a high school teacher that would make half a cup of coffee in the morning and then "sip" it throughout the day (to spit in).

[esseph]

Dip, yes. Although I knew guys that swallowed the dip spit (insane).

The Snus saliva (actual snus) just gets swallowed. Same with Zyn and others.

[gwbas1c]

The problems with chewing tobacco are well-known.

BTW, colon cancer is rising among men in their 40s, and there is no known reason why.

[v64]

Those problems are because of the tobacco. Zyn packets et al are just nicotine, and nicotine itself has not been shown to be a carcinogen.

[No1]

Nicotine itself may not be a carcinogen, but its metabolites are. Nicotine itself has been demonstrated to be a tumor promoter by way of increasing tumor cell division in lung cancer and inhibiting apoptosis.

Quoting chemical highlight 25-1 from "Organic Chemistry" 6th edition by Vollhardt & Schore:

Nicotine appears to play a dual contributory role, because its metabolites are outright carcinogens and because the parent system itself, while not causing cancer, is a tumor promoter.

The metabolic pathway has as the initial step the N-nitrosation of the azacyclopentane (pyrrolidine) nitrogen. Oxidation and ring opening (compare Chemical Highlight 21-3) then take place, giving a mixture of two N-nitrosodialkanamines (N-nitrosamines), each of which is a known powerful carcinogen.

Upon protonation of the oxygen in the nitroso group, these substances become reactive alkylating agents, capable of transferring methyl groups to nucleophilic sites in biological molecules such as DNA, as shown below. The diazohydroxide that remains decomposes through a diazonium ion to a carbocation, which may inflict additional molecular damage (Section 21-10).

You can read more at https://archive.org/stream/VollhardtOrganicChemistryStructur...

[gwbas1c]

At this point, I wouldn't assume that any nicotine delivery system is safe.

IE, e-cigarettes used to be promoted as safe, until the popcorn lung incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans#E-cig... (TLDR, some e-cigarettes used diacetyl as a flavoring, which is safe to eat but very toxic to inhale.)

(Kinda stinks because nicotine is a cool drug.)

[mapt]

The lipid pneumonia outbreak was a thing exclusively associated with THC vapes, which are an illegal but widespread cottage (garage) industry where one summer, one of the thousands of manufacturer-enthusiasts made a forum post about the innovation of maybe using vitamin E acetate as a thickener. Experiments were performed, positive results were obtained, and products went out to distributors. The hazard to heavy users (perhaps for manufacturers with poor blending practices, we don't know) who showed up in the ER, was recognized within a month or two, and everybody immediately stopped using vitamin E acetate as a thickener. It took most of a year of panic for the last of that summer's merchandise to percolate through the supply chain.

The outbreak was initially hard for users to trace in particular because of how brands worked in that (again, moderately illegal) industry - a "brand" was basically a paper label/bag production line shipped in the clear from a printer, to hundreds of individual manufacturers, who negotiated their own distribution. Conclusions like "Mellow Mallow Blurple is a safe brand, I tested it" ended up being invalid.

[gwbas1c]

> The lipid pneumonia outbreak was a thing exclusively associated with THC vapes

Not true, see the above link.

[mapt]

There was a lot of fog of war at the time, and a lot of things were reported in the media that were inaccurate (or reported to doctors that were inaccurate, this being documentation of illegal drug use). This is my conclusion about what actually went on, aides by a number of articles in the tech, health, and especially cannabis media. Eg:

https://www.inverse.com/science/59207-vitamin-e-acetate-thc-...

https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/58581-dank-vapes

All you need to defend a Wikipedia claim staying in the article is a journalist writing something, and journalists with zero idea of what they were talking about outnumbered informed writers a thousand to one.