I read recently a report from Britain that MPs might no longer be allowed a provision of snuff.  Who knew it was still around in Parliament?  This is only a Lib Dem member's idea for getting rid of "Parliament's more arcane traditions".  Also included were the rules requiring male MPs to wear ties (I agree wholeheartedly, ridiculous item of clothing, if quite pretty), and addressing MPs as "the member for...).  I think the latter two are similar in NZ but I am (almost) sure snuff is not available in the NZ Parliament.

What surprised me most was the sentence snuff was available since smoking was banned in the chamber in the late 17th century.  I didn't know the health disadvantages or the discomfort of being in a roomful of smokers was understood that far back.  (Though James I is famously known to have objected to it.) 

Did snuff pre-date tobacco in cigarette or cigar or pipe form or were they contemporaneous?  Why has it become redundant when cigarettes have needed so much official discouragement in the form of higher prices, warnings on packaging, plain packaging etc?

I think Columbus (and other early explorers of the Americas) encountered both practices - inhaling snuff and inhaling tobacco smoke - and so they were introduced to Europe almost simultaneously, although I'm not sure how quickly either took off in European society. As a non smoker I feel snuff-taking is less obnoxious as it doesn't really affect anyone other than the participant, but either practice seems a bit bizarre when viewed dispassionately. I wonder if it was not this odd, novelty value than boosted tobacco's early popularity, rather than any percieved health or drug effects. That said, Catherine de Medici did much to popularise tobacco when she took snuff to relieve her headaches on the advice of Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to Portugal, who had described tobacco's medicinal properties, and who of course gave his name to nicotine. Catherine was so impressed with its curative properties that she declared that tobacco should be known in France as "Herba Regina" (Queens' Herb), and according snuff-taking rather than smoking became the fashion at the French court.

Regarding snuff taking in the House of Commons ... from wiki, 'A floral-scented snuff called "English Rose" is provided for members of the British House of Commons. Recent practice has been for this tradition to be maintained at the principal doorkeeper's personal expense due to smoking in the House being banned since 1693. A famous silver communal snuff box kept at the entrance of the House was destroyed in an air raid during World War II with a replacement being subsequently presented to the House by Winston Churchill. Very few members are said to take snuff nowadays.'

BBC News 5 Nov 2013 - The nose habit: should MPs snuff it out?

Caro and Meles meles,

to add to your comments Meles meles.

It was very popular overhere among the generation before me, the Thirties. Alltough when I was working during school vacations among bricklayers it was still common. Mostly on the back of the hand and then snuffed from there. BTW: snuff (Dutch: snuif) sniff(schuiven)
But some said to me that the real thing was as showed overhere:




My grandmother, as most older woman, were also sniffing especially in company of other old women as socializer. Many times I was overthere too in such a company with my grandmother when I guess was 6 years old...

Meles meles has most already explained but I add it nevertheless:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_(tobacco)#History


For the start of smoking in history I will look tomorrow...

Kind regards to both of you from Paul.

As I understand it, at least in the Georgian era it was etiquette for women (or at least ladies) to take snuff from a special spoon rather from the hand.

Anglo-Norman wrote:

As I understand it, at least in the Georgian era it was etiquette for women (or at least ladies) to take snuff from a special spoon rather from the hand.

Tobacco has always been seen as not something any real lady should enjoy - even if taken from a silver spoon. A lovely comment about Gertrude Bell (see the Lawrence of Arabia thread) was that, having left Oxford, Gertrude started smoking - all part of what her family described as her self-indulgence in an "orgy of independence". Wonderful expression!

Gertrude Bell didn't just "take up" smoking ... at Oxford she threw herself into "an orgy of independence", as you say, ... and became infamous, even amongst the academic, pipe/cigar/cigarillo/roll-up, oxbridge guys, as a serious chain-smoker. Throughout the rest of her life her nicotine habit caused her to suffer from repeated bouts of bronchitis and it also probably exacerbated the pleurisy (following malaria) that she contracted just before her death. Although in a nod to femininity, she did often use a cigarette holder.

T E Lawrence and Gertrude Bell ... she with a familiar cigarette in hand:

Caro,

"Did snuff pre-date tobacco in cigarette or cigar or pipe form or were they contemporaneous?  Why has it become redundant when cigarettes have needed so much official discouragement in the form of higher prices, warnings on packaging, plain packaging etc?"

From what I read today snuff, cigars and pipes were contemporaneous.
http://www.randomhistory.com/2009/01/31_tobacco.html
Tobacco was likely first either chewed (what Iain Gately calls the “eat it and then find out approach”) dried, toasted, or powered for inhalation through the nose in the process called snuffing
The source of this site is the following book:
https://www.amazon.ca/Tobacco-Cultural-History-Seduced-Civilization/dp/0802139604

And about pipe smoking:
http://www.tobaccopipes.com/blog/tobacco-pipes-history-looking-back/
"The first smoking pipes identified were found in Egypt and dated back to 2000 BC. Archeologists found them inside tombs, primarily alongside mummies. Presumably so the mummified person could enjoy a smoke in the afterlife. Historians are unsure if the Egyptians used pipe smoking in religious rituals or purely recreationally.
The Romans, Greeks, Celts and Nordic tribes all smoked tobacco pipes. Clearly the practice was nearly world wide. In fact, Hypocrites, the father of medicine as we know it, prescribed “smoking herbs in a pipe” as a remedy for many female ailments. The Greek historian Herodotus was recorded describing the Iranian horse tribes, known as the Scythians, smoking “burning leaves” in 500 BC. It is assumed that the Greeks and Romans actually acquired the habit from forays into the East."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_smoking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_pipe
"Smoking pipes of various types have been used since ancient times. Herodotus described Scythians inhaling the fumes of burning leaves in 500 B.C.^[1]
Some Native American cultures smoke tobacco in ceremonial pipes, and have done so since long before the arrival of Europeans. Other American Indian cultures smoke tobacco socially.^[2] The tobacco plant is native to South America but spread into North America long before Europeans arrived. Tobacco was introduced to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century and spread around the world rapidly.
As tobacco was not introduced to the Old World until the 16th century, the older pipes outside of the Americas were usually used to smoke hashish, a rare and expensive substance outside areas of the Middle East, Central Asia and India, where it was then produced.

The majority of pipes sold today, whether handmade or machine-made, are fashioned from briar (French: bruyère). Briar is a particularly well suited wood for pipe making for a number of reasons. The first and most important characteristic is its natural resistance to fire. The second is its inherent ability to absorb moisture. The burl absorbs water in nature to supply the tree in the dry times and likewise will absorb the moisture that is a byproduct of combustion. Briar is cut from the root burl of the tree heath (Erica arborea), which is native to the rocky and sandy soils of the Mediterranean region. Briar burls are cut into two types of blocks; ebauchon and plateaux. Ebauchon is taken from the heart of the burl while plateaux is taken from the outer part of the burl. While both types of blocks can produce pipes of the highest quality, most artisan pipemakers prefer to use plateaux because of its superior graining.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_arborea

When I was young (the Fifties) most older men mashed tobacco (pruimen) and then spit it out at the most unexpected moment. If I recall it well even older women did it. And I am nearly sure my father smoked a briar pipe.

Kind regards from Paul.

Caro wrote:

What surprised me most was the sentence snuff was available since smoking was banned in the chamber in the late 17th century.  I didn't know the health disadvantages or the discomfort of being in a roomful of smokers was understood that far back.

The 1664 Orders demand 'That noe Member of the House doe presume to take Tobacco in the Gallery of the House' and 'That noe Member of the House doe presume to take Tobacco at the Table Sitting at Committees'.

What's remarkable is how long it took to outlaw smoking in other public places such as on public transport. In Britain smoking was prohibited on London Underground trains only in 1984 and then in stations in 1987. British Airways introduced a smoking ban on its aircraft in 1990 while London Transport banned smoking on buses in 1991. In Kent, smoking carriages and smoking compartments on trains were scrapped in 1993 by Network SouthEast. I hadn’t realized at the time, however, that this was only a local initiative and that smoking continued on trains in other parts of the UK right up until 2005. Finally in 2007 a general ban on smoking in all enclosed public spaces in England came into effect.

15 years on and New Zealand has become the first country to introduce an escalating ban on all smoking which will effectively amount to prohibition in future. One wonders, however, if this is perhaps an example of a puritanical extremism gone too far which could well (like other prohibitions) ultimately prove counter-productive.

Yes, there is a ban on selling tobacco products to anyone born after 1st January 2009. We want to be smokefree by 2025. That seems a long shot to me, though certainly in recent years smoking has become much less popular, though whether its substitute, vaping, will prove any less dangerous remains to be seen. You can't dispute figures but my great-uncle smoked a pipe (though perhaps he less smoked it than fiddled with it) and he lived to be 95. My father also smoked (cigarettes)and he died aged 44. I smoked until I got pregnant when my husband would have gone berserk if I had continued while pregnant: I gave up totally cold turkey when my middle son aged 6 started to ask for them. 

But on a side note I am just started reading Terry Pratchett's Snuff! So far there is nothing about any sort of snuff in it.