I started using nicotine pouches instead of smoking or vaping back in the US, it’s becoming a pretty big thing now. Not the ones you put on your skin, but the ones that you put under your lip. Some of the most popular brands are Zyns, Velo, and Lyft. They are considered tobacco free because they use “nicotine salts”.
They are now sold everywhere in the US, and UK and was surprised not to see any smokeless options here. Has anyone found somewhere to buy them locally in Taiwan? Or online (if it is legal of course)?
From what I understand, snus isn’t legal to import because it’s not on the list of approved types of tobacco, while nicotine pouches aren’t legal to import because they’re classed as pharmaceutical products (need an import license, which I believe is practically impossible to get for these things).
See these previous threads - the first one from me after having some confiscated by customs:
I do occasionally run into random Scandinavian people who bring it in with them when they arrive, but buying it locally or having it mailed in seems like pretty much a no-go now and for the foreseeable future (at least for me - customs have confiscated my orders twice now, so I’m probably on some list and haven’t attempted it since my thread above ).
Maybe nicotine gum would be an acceptable (albeit inferior) alternative if you need the fix. Some pharmacies really overcharge for it, but it’s like NT$799 per box at the Shanghai Union Dispensary near Ximen/NTUH (cheapest place I found when I was using it, though haven’t needed it for a few months).
Only way around this is get domestic tobacco/alcohol monopoly to make smokeless tobacco. The reason for weird laws on this is because of them. Either that or try and grow your own tobacco. No idea the legalities of this. Probably fine for personal use but not if you are selling.
And with anything Taiwanese if you’re not following the majority then it’s basically a niche item. In Taiwan it seems it’s all cigarettes and there are no deviation from this. I have no idea what pipe smokers use.
Or chew betel nuts… that seems to be how they deal with smokeless fixes.
Yeah, I’m not really going to become a tobacco farmer and snus manufacturer to get around it, tbh…
(I did actually read into the laws for importing recently, and IIRC it’s more difficult/costly to get a tobacco manufacturing license than it is to get an import license. I don’t remember reading of any exceptions for personal use. I don’t want to become a tobacco farmer anyway.)
Yeah, only realistic way is if the domestic monopoly were to take an interest in it, which doesn’t seem likely as you said.
It’s either that or you get companies like Phillip Morris to get import license to get snus into Taiwan, but that would require that enough majority of Taiwanese wants snus to begin with. I can see this happening with China (I wouldn’t be surprised if you can get snus there) but not Taiwan. The market is simply way too small for any global corporations to care… Taiwan might as well be Tattoine for all they care. I actually get a lot of products, even American made ones, through Taobao simply because they have far better availability compared to Taiwan, and with the way shipping gets massively delayed because COVID becomes a convenient excuse to do their job poorly, I get quicker (and cheaper) shipping out of China than deal with American sellers who can’t tell Taiwan from Thailand.
Have you ever thought about getting loose tobacco (you know for pipes and stuff) and figuring out a way to turn that into snus?
I’ve thought about it actually, but there’s some processing involved and it’d probably end up pretty vile. I prefer nicotine pouches these days as well anyway, rather than actual snus (possibly easier to make in principle, but the pure nicotine and other raw materials would be difficult/impossible to get here).
It’s not an immediate problem for me in any case. I’m good for this stuff for a while.
I don’t know I always thought snus was pretty vile, but I’m not much of a smoker.
Maybe you can figure out how to extract nicotine out of cigarette ash or dried tobacco, but I gotta warn you, pure nicotine is pretty nasty as far as toxicity goes. Cigarette ash is actually used as insecticide.
I used to like it, but recently I’ve found it a bit more jittery/anxiety-inducing than pure nicotine pouches for some reason (and the flavor isn’t as nice).
Yeah, too much hassle, I’m not doing that.
Thanks, but no warning necessary. My background is in chemistry research, and nicotine isn’t the worst thing I’ve handled. I’ve used pure nicotine before (for making vape liquids) - it’s fine, just need to not be careless about it, as with your lathe.
Yea, I’d say the worst chemical I handled is probably potassium dichromate. I heard it’s not a nice chemical though, at least for the environment. I like chemistry a lot, but some of the stuff I see on youtube is really crazy and I’d never want to try it at home without access to a proper lab. I did use bromoform back in the states to separate out the heavier minerals (the stuff is really dense and most normal rocks floats in it, it’s also carcinogenic). It was expensive too, something like 600 dollars a liter. Could have just gotten bleach, acetone, and some sodium bromide and make the stuff…
Lathes are actually an incredibly dangerous machine by the way… if it can spin a 100kg piece of steel at 1000rpm with ease, it will do the same to you. No long sleeves, no ties, and tie up that long hair. Also if you spin something unbalanced… imagine a 2 ton machine jumping across the floor like a washing machine…
Saw some video of guys using Zyn nicotine pouches, no tobacco, to get high.
Some of them said the buzz from Zyn is so good that they don’t need to drink beer. Using one every couple hours. Maybe they aren’t regular smoker so they get more of a buzz from it.
I don’t know if they’re joking completely or maybe they get a little buzz or something.
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