How many pouches do you dip

Smokeless tobacco has high levels of chemicals and other substances that can cause cancer, especially mouth and throat cancer. It can also cause leathery white patches in the mouth that can turn into cancer. Tooth decay and mouth sores. The sugar in smokeless tobacco can cause tooth decay and painful mouth sores. Poor gum health. How to Quit Quitting smokeless tobacco is a lot like quitting smoking, but there are some differences.

Quit Notes. Avoid external triggers. Go places and do things where smoking and tobacco aren't allowed. The SmokefreeVET texting program can be a source of support for you during your quit. Sign Up. More for you. How to Quit Dipping or Chewing Tobacco. Make a plan to quit and learn how to deal with challenges of quitting smokeless tobacco.

Manage the Challenges of Quitting. Understand why you feel like you need to smoke. Quitting is hard, and using smokeless tobacco while trying to quit is common. But don't give up. Your chances of quitting get better each time you try!

Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. What Is Smokeless Tobacco? Smokeless tobacco comes as either snuff or chewing tobacco: Snuff is finer-grain tobacco that sometimes comes in pouches that look like teabags.

Chewing tobacco is larger-grain tobacco leaves that are twisted or shredded and come loose in paper packets or small cans. Why Is Smokeless Tobacco Dangerous? If you use smokeless tobacco, these tips can help you quit: Use nicotine gum or a nicotine patch, but only after talking to your doctor about which would work best for you.

I try them. They taste like Jolly Ranchers gone bad. The Dip Doctor is not a fan, either. Wherever I go, I take out a tin of dip and offer it to those around me. It seems the hospitable thing to do. Sometimes the tin's appearance elicits moral outrage one friend, the daughter of a dental hygienist, asks, "Are you doing an article on getting gum cancer? As I leave the party, I offer it to three men on the sidewalk taking a smoke break.

They shake their heads, then turn their backs to me. Ostracized by the ostracized. So who are the six million users? Well, baseball players are the most visible. A major league outfielder agrees to email me to explain the love affair—as long as I don't use his name.

Is it a performance enhancer? Not really. More of a semi-sacred ritual that passes the time, lowers stress, and distracts you. Because baseball, if you hadn't noticed, is really damn slow.

That's not to mention a surprising number of finance guys. As a vice, it's got plenty of advantages. If you're a trader, you don't have to leave your desk and lurk in a doorway with other cigarette-smoking reprobates. You can stay in front of your Bloomberg terminal, spitting into empty soda cans. He prefers not to use his name, since he's in the closet at both work and home where he keeps the tins hidden in the basement, away from his wife. I justified my habit because I told myself I was doing research.

Max Shea—who works in international equities at Cantor Fitzgerald—tells me he dips when he has to work late nights writing reports. A third tells me, "There are more of us than you think. I live in a small Connecticut town where a lot of people work in finance.

And the gas station here has a whole fridge full of smokeless tobacco. I am doing a research project on my family history and go visit a seventy-two-year-old genealogist at her home to discuss the latest findings. She goes to the kitchen and hands me a glass. It's got a picture of a nineteenth-century rabbi on it—part of a collection, she tells me. Her eyes widen. You shouldn't be spitting on the rabbi. Spitting is the most controversial part of smokeless tobacco.

It's the part my family hates most, thanks to the half-filled Diet Coke cans I often forget to clean up that dot the tables of my apartment.

Miraculously, no one has yet taken a swig. True dip fans swear by expectorating. And yet not all smokeless tobacco requires spitting. I figure it's time to test out some saliva-free versions. First, I try a tin of dry snuff. Snuff is powdered tobacco you can ingest by snorting. It's got a long history—Beethoven and Napoleon loved to carry around boxes of it—but snuff just reminds me of cheap, dirty-looking cocaine.

When I sniff a little mound, it makes my nose burn, then I sneeze repeatedly. I can't get over the brown powder all over my hands. I look like I just came in from plowing potato fields. Next I test out an increasingly popular product called snus.

Snus started in Sweden, where they remain hugely popular. They're little individual packets of tobacco, each one the size of a Chiclet. You tuck the snus into your upper lip, not the lower, because it's the Scandinavian way.

There's some evidence snus might be a tad healthier than chew, though I wouldn't bet my insurance premium on it. Regardless, they cause much less saliva. You rarely if ever need to spit. I tuck a snus into my lip one afternoon at my laptop and immediately fall for them. Snus are clean, compartmentalized, modern—a bite-sized version of Ikea. They're prepackaged and convenient, like my kids' juice boxes. The Dip Doctor would be disappointed. And I feel un-American. But several of the Wall Street guys tell me they prefer the snus as well—they're easier to hide at work.

You can have one tucked into your cheek at a meeting, no cup required. Plus, they can be surprisingly strong.