Tony,

There's a big difference between Skoal/Cope and real chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco is like Redman, and comes in big pouches. You throw a huge handful of that crap in and gnaw on it. It doesn't burn like skoal/cope has a tendency to do.

Long cut/mid cut/snuff is, as far as I'm aware, actually cut with pieces of fiberglass in it. You don't even need to bother sucking on it, the nicotine absorbs through your gum/lip and voila, a nicotine buzz. You're not swallowing the spit, right? I assume you've got yourself a bottle, and you're spittin into that, or somesuch. The only time you should really need to manipulate the dip is when you move it around a bit to get the moister stuff from the inside... other than that, throw it in and leave it be.

When I smoked, I dipped when I couldnt smoke, and found the buzz to be a bit much at times. I dipped skoal straight long cut. Couldnt stand snuff, or any of the mid cuts. Bleh. I've since quit.

The only worry about dip is that its remarkably addictive. Moreso than cigarettes. People I've know that had smoked, and then taken up dipping, cautioned against starting, because its harder to quit than smoking is. And, as we've covered in OOT before, smoking is supposedly harder to quit than heroin... or somethin. Tangentially, I found it easier to quit smoking than to quit doing coke. Whatever.

yasher