With almost ten years in the snus industry, Patrik Strömer has a lot to do in a charged debate that has suddenly flared up. A 200-year-old cultural product has suddenly turned into tobacco harm reduction on the world stage. Vejpkollen takes the pulse of a genuine snus lobbyist - with his feet in the soil of Småland.
"I am very open about my activities. I am a snus lobbyist. But I use publicly published data. I draw conclusions. They don't have to be right, but then I want a better explanation if I am going to change my mind. I hope I have credibility, even in my role as a representative of commercial interests." Says Patrik Strömer, when Vejpkollen's reporter meets him on an early summer day in Stockholm.
Snus - a vanguard to e-cigs and nicotine pouches
Patrik Strömer basically gives the impression of a very level-headed personality. He is an expert on industrial policy at the Swedish Food Federation and Secretary General of the Swedish Snus Manufacturers' Association. In this role, he has plenty to keep him busy at a time and in a debate that has flared up in connection with the loaded concept of tobacco-harm-reduction. It's about modern smokeless nicotine products such as e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn and nicotine pouches, which are all part of an evolution, but where snus, specifically Swedish snus, forms a historical, if rather unconscious, vanguard.
"Smoking for the nicotine - but dying from the tar"
"We don't know exactly when snuff appeared in Sweden, but an 18th century snuff box has been found in Norrköping. In 1822, the Ljunglöfs tobacco factory created Ettan, and modern Swedish snuff was born. It turns out to be handy if you need both hands for hard manual labour, as a farmhand, labourer or sailor, while the gentlemen can sit with their cigars or pipes and look out over the work. Nicotine has been in all these products because that's what you want, otherwise you don't use it. And that brings us to the old saying that smokers smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar." says Patrik Strömer.
Almost disappeared completely
While for some of these 200 years snus has had a somewhat shabby identity, so aptly illustrated in the Jokkmokk Jokke song from the 1960s about Gulli-Gullan, whose personal advert is so attractive ("I offer you two rooms and a kitchen") that the narrator of the song is prepared to give up his snus ("for kisses I'll sacrifice the price"), there has been a gradual turnaround since the 1970s.
Patrik Strömer notes that snus was on the verge of disappearing completely from the market when sales began to dry up 60 years ago.
"In fact, there was talk of discontinuing snus production for a while in the 60s. But then two things started to emerge. Firstly, more and more doctors are becoming increasingly certain of the link between smoking and lung cancer. Then the portioned snus starts to appear, and from 1980 Swedish men start to stop smoking and start using snus; for women it takes a while to switch. And for me, this is proof that people "start to quit smoking with the help of snus". And the evolution that has been from then to now, which is unique in Europe."
Tobacco always in question
Patrik Strömer describes a development involving several significant events, sometimes in the form of fortunate coincidence. The manufacturers undertook a comprehensive review of the snus's ingredients and production, in typical Swedish folkhemsmaner, to maximise safety and minimise risk.
"Of course, the ingredients were questioned - we're talking about nicotine and tobacco - and indeed there were some hazardous substances such as tobacco-specific nitrosamines which are carcinogenic in higher doses. In the late 1980s, Swedish Match, which had a virtual monopoly on snus sales, began to seriously address this. The outcome is what is known as the GothiaTek quality standard for best practice at every stage. In some cases, the levels of these potentially harmful substances have been reduced to one thousandth in some cases and one hundredth in others. It is significant in all cases."
From chance to awareness
At the same time, he recognises that not everything called 'snus' is the same as 'Swedish snus'. And that it was something of a coincidence from the start.
"There are snuffs out there in the world, like Indian gutka or toombak from Sudan, both of which are proven carcinogens. We were lucky with the Swedish snus, as it is lightly pasteurised from the start. And that was really just to make it last longer and withstand transport in the 19th century. But it also turned out that the health impact was further minimised thanks to this. Snus has been food-regulated since 1971 with full hygiene requirements to the same standard set by the WHO."
When snus became politics
So is the exemption from the EU rule on snus, or the ban to be precise. The story is long, fascinating, at times both uncomfortable and hysterical. It includes moral panics, easy "protect our children" politics, dirty tricks in the form of unscientific and cherry-picked and at times even Tipp-Exade studies, where report authors make, probably quite deliberately, a mixture of Swedish and Indian snus. The result, as we know, is a 30-year total ban on "Swedish snus" throughout the EU, accompanied by hearty pats on the back from the entire anti-smoking lobby. At least from the point of view of snus activists.
British book on snus an inspiration
The process is described through its many twists and turns in the book "The Art of Suppression: Pleasure, Panic and Prohibition Since 1800", written by British libertarian Christopher Snowdon. A book that has inspired Patrik Strömer over the years.
"Snowdon's concise point is that as long as the group using a product is small enough, you can go after the product and ban it. Facts and medical science are, at best, only there by necessity. The snus ban came into force in 1992, before Sweden joined the EU. So that discussion never took place here. It did, however, in 1994, when Sweden was due to hold a referendum on the EU and it would have been a 'no' vote if we had not been allowed to keep our snus. There was still no discussion about harm reduction, but it was simply a matter of us having a cultural product and a tradition that we wanted to keep. We got it, in the form of an exemption from EU rules," says Patrik Strömer.
Opting out of cigarettes
Only later did Swedish Match realise that there is a difference between cigarettes and snus. The company then chose to focus on the product that did not "kill their consumers", says Patrik Strömer.
"That's when they discontinued the cigarette business. And that's also when they developed the GothiaTek standard."
Sweden inspired anti-tobacco activists
In the UK, where the snus ban originated in 1989, around the turn of the millennium Prime Minister Tony Blair, together with the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) organisation and others, had decided to take further action to reduce smoking. Among the protagonists of that initiative was the then ASH director Clive Bates. Bates was an anti-tobacco activist, who discovered through his research that Sweden had unusually few smokers but no less tobacco consumption than other EU countries. The difference was that we sniffed more, a habit that did not seem to lead to the same harmful effects as smoking. Clive Bates, now a well-known figure in the harm reduction movement, reported his views to UK ministers.
"Bates's report was not what people wanted to hear, neither in the UK nor in the EU. But he himself was saved," says Patrik Strömer. He saw the link between snus use instead of smoking and fewer cases of disease. And the realisation that this is not just a product for adult enjoyment that we have prepared traditionally and since time immemorial, but that this is a product that can save thousands of lives in Sweden, more in Europe and millions worldwide." says Patrik Strömer.
Snus and e-cigs took centre stage
Today, Clive Bates is a leading advocate on the world stage for tobacco harm reduction, a concept whose spread he has been instrumental in. At international conferences such as the Global Forum on Nicotine and the E-Cig Summit, he regularly delivers powerful presentations in which Sweden's successes are regularly mentioned. His website, The Counterfactual, is one of the sharpest in its field. He has also, like few others, ensured that the word "snus" has gained a considerable international spread; not since "smorgasboard" and "ombudsman" has a genuine Swedish word been exported in such a way - ironically, when the product itself is banned from import in large parts of the world. But if you are saved, you are saved.
Road pactivism versus snuff passion
Patrik Strömer sees a similar approach among e-cigarette consumers, the global equivalent of snus users, with their passionate action groups and active debate forums. But it is an activism that differs slightly from that of snus consumers in Sweden.
"That's interesting. I don't find the same feeling among snus users in the same way here in Sweden. Here, people have been able to get their snus, and the tradition is very strong. But if you look at all these millions of e-cigarette consumers around the world who have smoked, not managed to quit although many have tried. They have been told they are bad people, immoral and weak-willed and otherwise stigmatised as less knowledgeable. So suddenly discovering a product that becomes the saviour? I don't know what it's like to become religious, but for someone from this group, it must almost feel like getting eternal life. A whole new chance anyway. To have two, five, ten, maybe twenty extra years to live. To be able to see your grandchildren grow up... I think that feeling of happiness is hard to put your finger on. And you have to be really careful about taking that happiness away from these people." says Patrik Strömer.
Angry but passionate
Patrik Strömer himself, in the midst of his level-headed personality and his cultivation of a traditional "cultural product" (of which he himself consumes two doses in three days), seems passionate enough, as befits the secretary-general of the union he has been working for since 2014. The road to this position was paved by a piece of consumer activism, centred on a scandal he calls 'Tipp-Ex-gate'. For those of you who don't know, tipp-ex was (or still is) a chemical product used to "iron out" unwanted words or to manually change text on printed paper - a thick overprinting ink brushed over the ink.
But what does Tipp-ex have to do with snus?
"I started snuffing when I was twenty and studying in Växjö, it was a habit I enjoyed. I stopped a couple of times when the tax was raised but started again when I got a permanent job. In 2012, a new tobacco directive was presented in the EU and there was a research report that concluded that there are snus users out there in the world with an increased frequency of oral cancer. "But not when it comes to Swedish snus", the author of the report had written. But the version given to EU politicians had "tippexed" over that particular part. Very obviously, too.
That was leaked and when I saw this deliberate way of misleading people, I got angry and decided that the EU should never take away our snus. So I wrote some articles on Newsmill about this scandal. There were more articles about another scandal shortly afterwards, when EU Commissioner John Dalli wanted €60 million from Swedish Match to "authorise" snus in the EU. Swedish Match blew the whistle and Dalli was fired. And after that, no one dares to discuss snus in the EU, for fear of corruption." Patrik Strömer explains.
Wanted to take the issue seriously
The Swedish Snus Manufacturers' Association was formed in this backwater, as the Swedish snus producers felt that there was a need for a trade association that could pursue issues relating to snus without employer responsibility.
"And then they needed a person who could lead this. They thought of the guy who wrote so wonderfully angrily on Newsmill and asked me if I was interested. 'It depends,' I said, 'do you want a good old boy who can take in seven pints at once or do you want someone who can understand a bit about how politics works and who can read and write and who can read and interpret scientific reports? They wanted that. It's a half-time position and I have the title of Secretary-General. In fact, it was that title that clinched it for me." smiles Patrik Strömer.
So are there any blunders that the Swedish snus and nicotine industry has made, would you say?
"When the nicotine portions arrived, they were not regulated anywhere. And that was inappropriate. What kind of product was this that didn't have tobacco but did have nicotine? Innovation doesn't always work in the classification or categorisation model we have set up to make sense of the world. So what was this: a snus, a food, a medicine or a chemical product? And which authority should be responsible for it?"
The industry was ahead of the game
In 2019, there was an industry agreement to have health warnings, a list of contents with nicotine content, an 18-year age limit and limited marketing with a ban on street sampling, among other things.
"Which was not prohibited by law, mind you; the legislation only came into place three years later. At some festivals, cans were handed out, albeit in designated areas where alcohol was served and the age limit was 18. Then there were pop-up events where people would be asked if they smoked and, if so, offered a nicotine pouch as an alternative." says Patrik Strömer. "But I'm not sure that the question of smoking was always asked."
Similar to the gambling market
Patrik Strömer describes the emerging market for nicotine pouches a bit like the gambling market. Fairly free, yet with a controversial product at its centre, which would sooner or later be regulated.
"Once regulation was in place, a window was closed, and before that it was just a case of expanding your market share as fast as you can by any means possible. There is nothing as horrible as watching such a process. Instead of getting a more harmonious and organic growth, you get extreme behaviour. In a way, for my own conscience, it's good that I'm not involved in commercial matters, because I had nothing to do with it."
You don't go out and say something along the lines of "There must be some bloody order"?
"As a non-profit organisation with an information purpose, it is difficult to interfere in things that can be seen as anti-competitive. I have no power in that way or legal expertise. Overall, I think it has worked and when it hasn't, in some cases there has been a stop in deliveries to those who have broken the rules. As for the 18-year age limit, it also means that this is when children stop being children. If you can vote and get a driving licence, you can buy snus, that's my rule of thumb. I think you should be careful with the language, because there can be misunderstandings. And you should avoid that."
There is no indication that Patrik Strömers' employment will be any less full in the immediate future, not least when the EU presents its new tobacco directive later this year. Or as he himself asks himself:
"I wonder what scandals will emerge this time." concludes Patrik Strömer.
