For visitors, Sweden is great for what is absent as it exists. Walk in Stockholm, you hear a few noise of traffic, because the Swedes have strongly adopted electric cars. (They seem to hate constitutionally to tighten. The air carries any trace of cigarette smoke. During five days I spent in Sweden in January, I could calculate the number of smokers I faced on the one hand, and I did not see anyone withdrawing on VAPE. In November 2024, Sweden was announced “smoking free” because an adult smoking rate decreased to less than five percent. With smoking decline, as well as related diseases, such as flatulence; Sweden has one of the lowest lung cancer rates in the European Union, and this shift is widely described in academic papers as “Swedish experience”.
However, the Swedes have a huge appetite for nicotine, which is the chemical that causes tobacco addiction. About a third of Swedish people consume nicotine, mostly get their repairs from SNUS – Small, Gossamer bag that resembles Dollhouse pillows, which users use in the gums. SNUS cows provide nicotine to the bloodstream through sensitive oral membranes; The Swedes refer to the resulting tune like Nikokik.
“Snus is the first thing I eat every morning when I wake up,” said Li Niklas Ronston, thirty -year -old podcast producer. “It is the last thing I brought out before cleaning my teeth.” We were sitting in his office, in Stockholm, and he was wearing a brown plate in the shape of a hockey. He said: “I wake up about seventeen hours a day, and I may have my line in my mouth for sixteen hours and thirty minutes.”
Scandinavians have a proud history of using SNUS. During the mid -seventeenth century, the tobacco that inhales on the ground became common in the French royal stadium and made its way to Sweden. Later, the Swedes of the working class began adding a liquid to the powder and putting it against their gums, as mud -like paste. Bags were presented pre -pre -pre -made today in the seventies of the last century, as more people turned into SNUS to stop smoking. In the early nineties of the nineteenth century, when Sweden held a referendum on whether to join the European Union, which had a SNU’s ban on the mass level, voters decorate their cars with bunny stickers read, “the European Union? It is not without my SNUS.” Ultimately, Sweden was given an exemption from the ban in exchange for strict warning stickers.
The most committed Swedish enthusiasts sometimes speaks like sommeliers, who are able to discover accurate differences in the quality and flavor of tobacco. Before fäviken closed, he was known for his restaurant from Michelin’s stars, the famous Swedish chef Magnus Nelson was giving him the sponsors of part of Snus at the end of their meal. In Skansen, a part of Stockholm that includes a children’s zoo and Farmstead Tours, there is the Snus and Match Museum, partly funded by Tobacco Swedish Match. SNUS also worked as an economic engine: In 1915, Sweden has nationalized its tobacco production to generate army revenues and the global retirement system for its citizens.
Renston began mocking eighteen, as soon as he was legally allowed. Remember what he attracted to him. He said: “A friend told me that the best thing in Snus is that you get a gift every day.” “When you finish your meal, you take a little present. It is like the gift you offer yourself, and without the consequences of smoking. It was the romantic part of Snus.”
Until recently, the word “SNUS” only indicated an enforceable product made of tobacco leaves. However, over the past decade, join the earthy structure by White Snus, a new product with a distinctive Swedish design elegance. White Snus, which consists of pure nicotine mixed with packing factors, has a little natural smell and does not stain teeth in the way that can be the traditional type. It was developed by Swedish scientists to attract women, an electoral circle that has not been historically transferred to Brown Snow. The creators also had ambitions to reach the Americans in the end.
“From the brand perspective, the white SNUS, like, is a genius thing,” Renston continued. One of his bags withdrew, which was brown. “this Los Angeles cannot be reached, because it tastes like shit! “He wiped two of his colleagues, Jonan Peterson and Hugo Lafette.” Your father is hidden? ” Our mothers’ generation will never be. “
White Snus bags have become common in the United States, although American mothers do not seem to have adopted them either. Zain, the nicotine bag launched by the Swedish match, was introduced to the American market in 2014, thanks to the heroes such as Joe Rogan and Taker Karlson, who became a player called Manverre. Tobacco Company Philip Morris International, which acquired the Swedish match in 2022, said it shipped 131.6 million of cans from Zain to the United States in the first quarter of 2024-an increase of one percent of the same period in the previous year.
The Swedish match is estimated that about seventy percent of cans are bought in the United States by men. “I am sure we have women buying Zain. Tom Allen, director of the western region at Smoker Friendly, said a large series of tobacco stores where the product was first tested in the United States.” I don’t remember whether I have seen a woman you buy in any of our stores. “
In some settings, Zyn is everywhere: the fingerprint of the heart in a pair of Khayi is the signature of the financing sector; Golf stadiums have published signs of sponsors not to get rid of their bags in the construction. Carlson used the producer to stir male arms race: After Philip Morris opposed a joke he made about the fact that Zain was “uncomfortable for males”, he criticized him as “not a brand for men” and launched a competitive bag called called Alp– The brand used by Robert F. Kennedy, Junior, during the confirmation session. Actor Josh Brolin told the podiums Mark Maroun that he kept Zain in his lips twenty -four hours a day. He said: “I do not lie ridiculous.” Fatah Kanster has emerged. “My wife heard this in the middle of the night. I don’t even know that I was doing it. I am sleeping.”
In Sweden, white bags are not exactly a slogan of pregnancy. “When I was working in Stockholm, the group of girls in my team, we all all Vogue Magazine The Scandinavian countries told me. You can buy bags in nicotine warehouses very brilliantly, the white SNUS Mint, JasMine Tea, and Melon Pomegranate-from refined tastes, which are conscious. “In Sweden, Taker Karlson was something laughing,” Renston said. “All they are talking about is associated with masculinity,” added Peterson, his colleague. “They do what I know most.”
In 2008, three Swedish scientists gathered at a laboratory in Helsinburg to test the white SNUS. Two of them, Thomas Ericsson and the individual of Nelson, had wallpapers in medicines-they worked on antibiotics and aspirin, among other drugs. (The third world was the son of Thomas, a chemical engineer named Robert.) Their new project was a “dynamic institute for fun”, and Ericsson, who is seventy -four, told me recently. When testing the various nicotine concentrations, use the trio as each other as laboratory rats, referring to a somewhat mysterious stick: “Tell me when you get Duzi.” Ericsson was already a regular user, while his son and Nelson were not. They tended to get Duzi much faster than Ericsson.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Ericsson worked at LeoIt is a Swedish pharmaceutical company with a major product, Nicorette, alternative gums for nicotine. He also developed tobacco processing protocols and patented that helped reduce cancer chemicals in the traditional SNUS. (By the twenty -ethnic, the level of harmful chemicals in SNUS was dramatically reduced.) At some point, Ericsson was assigned to raise nicotine levels in Nicoreret, but the higher concentrations led to side effects such as Hiccuping and stomach pain. As an alternative, his team depicts the white nicotine bag, which is cleaner birds on the traditional product. Since it will be served in the gums, it results from saliva less than chewing gum, and the side effects can be avoided. Ericsson began trying his garage, and by 1990 he and some colleagues were working on a patented SNU of Snus.
He told me: “You always have a philosophy.” “We said,” You must meet an important medical need. “” We were sitting in a dark, dark restaurant in Helsinburg, a home for many companies related to nicotine that is called Ericsson and Nicotine Valley. Ericsson is an accurate speaker, and throughout the conversation he produced the plans in a notebook. “How many people in the United States die annually due to smoking?” He asked. I said half a million. In Sweden, it was just a few thousand, Ericsson, as he was ruined in a notebook. “Who was smoking?” He asked. He had a hypothesis based on industry data: “Swedish females between the ages of eighteen and thirty -sixth,” answered, drawing the symbol between the sexes. Among the Swedish men, Brown Senus has already provided a convincing alternative to cigarettes. Ericsson expressed his hope that the white bags would like to like women, and to a US market that has greatly rejected the traditional SNUS.
“If you go back at that time, we think, Snus: brown, unpleasant, bitter, not exciting“Follow Ericsson.” How do you make this attractive for females between the ages of eighteen and thirty-six? ”In commercial presentations, it was often used a metaphor: if the cigarettes are standard gasoline cars, the brown SNUS is an effective alternative diesel, but it is not different enough to change the model. Snus white, on the other hand, is an electric car. The big, they will only change if they have an alternative. “Cigarette companies will not change if they do not have competition.”
Several repetitions of the Ericsson project have been thwarted. At one point, a group of investors who have financial interests in traditional tobacco products decided not to compete with the industry and stop development. He and his colleagues also have to choose whether their products would be sold as pharmaceutical preparations, such as nicorette, or as a life -style product, such as traditional SNUS. Ericsson did not want to follow the pharmaceutical path. After working on Nicoreret, he became skeptical of medical smoking take -off efforts. “I did not like pharmaceutical products to create dependencies. He said,” It is more moral for the person to decide himself. “We knew that consumers wanted to be free and not to go to a pharmacy. They are not sick.”
