I think the intentional conflation by the ad-makers of chewing tobacco with snuff is telling; my hunch is that only the latter really has an upper-class heritage.
Also, pretty much any ad which actually articulates, especially in words, an association between a product and the 'upper classes' is likely aimed at lower-middle to middle-class people. It's rather like lower-to-middle-class girls wearing big sunglasses and carrying name-brand handbags in an attempt to emulate the look of vapid celebrities -- any person actually from a higher social class would consider the look declasse, yet the people doing it tend to lack the social and cultural capital to recognize the distinction between the dress styles of people who are actually wealthy and the trashy 'bling' look.

There are so many little artifacts in this ad, like all those words--no print ad is nearly this wordy anymore.

I would date this ad to about 1976 or 1977, looking at the design and typography. If so, I can say with some confidence that, when I was growing up in Anchorage, Skoal, Cope, etc. were not considered "upper class" or whatever, and was considered by some to be pretty nasty, what with all the spitting.

Related was the use of Red Man and other "non snuff" chew--"whole leaf" I think it was called. A kid in my 8th grade (!) PE class would chew while playing ice hockey. He was a good player, but his expectorations would leave little bumps on the ice, making for bad skating and suboptimal puckhandling. This guy, even in the mid 1970s, was not considered the height of sophistication.

At my high school, the worn, tell-tale ring of a Skoal can on the back pockets of one's jeans was a sure sign of an aficionado of chew, and therefore someone considered "unsophisticated"--that is, by the unsophisticated standards of Anchorage, ca. 1977. I should note that, culturally, Alaska shared then as much with Texas as the rest of the nation, which may be relevant.

Of course, this is impressionistic--hardly a Geertzian thick description (which no one can define, but they know it when they see it, apparently).

In the late '90s I was a teaching assistant for a professor who actually did snuff (is "do" the right verb here? he put it up his nose) during his lectures. He had a little metal tin that he would tap with his fingers, and while he was talking he would get a little out, put it on a white handkerchief on his podium, tap it into a mass with his finger, and sniff it, all the while keeping up his lecture patter. He was in fact a seventysomething upper-class Brit, so I found it to be a somewhat hilariously stereotypical behavior, but my undergraduate students generally had literally no idea what was happening, and invariably the first day of my discussion section for the semester would involve explaining to them what snuff was.

If I may be a tobacco pedant for a moment:

(What? I'm from Alabama.)

That's not chewing tobacco. That's dip. Chewing tobacco is only the leafy/Red Man stuff. (And then there's plug tobacco, twist tobacco, etc...) Trust me, you can't chew Skoal, Copenhagen, etc. I mean, I guess you could, but it'd be miserable and fairly pointless and you'd probably swallow a bunch and then vomit.

At my (public) high school and at my brother's (private) school, the Skoal ring was about as cool as smoking, more or less. Less cool were the guys who'd dip in class and spit into a coke can, because that was gross, and occasionally the can would get knocked over.

Does anyone else remember Big League Chew, the shredded bubble gum in a pouch that was based off of the popularity of chewing tobacco among baseball players?

Also, being from Louisiana I can attest that dip is still fairly popular among the more rural and blue collar populations. Although it is considered rather odd if a girl or woman dips.

Snus is aristo, posh, whatever you wanna call it. But chewing tobacco is not.
If I understand the ad correctly, the add is for snus. Therefore the ad is right and Contexts isn't.

I remember being a bit startled in Walden when Thoreau says "My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it." But that suggests its popularity at least in America in the 1800. Most people these days aren't aware how recent cigarettes really are, but once they came out there was massive marketing to present them as civilized or cultured alternatives to the previously popular methods: pipes, cigars (which were often chewed unlit), chewable leaf or "plug" tobacco, and powdered snuff.

As for status and class... I'm not positive if it signifies class but they allegedly only removed the formal spittoons from the Congressional House and Senate chambers in the 1970s or 1980s.

It's certainly the case that the upper classes in the 17th and 18th Centuries took snuff, but that would have been the dried and finely powdered kind, not the moist, more granualr Scandinavian snus-style "snuff" that American Tobacco Company sells under the Skoal and Copenhagen brand names.

(I happen to know all this first because as a kid I spent summers with the farmhand kids at my grandfather's farm in North Carolina where pretty much anyone past age five who'd never finished school chewed tobacco and everyone who'd never been at all dipped powered snuff, second because in a high-school speech-arts class I picked tobacco as the subject for an extended talk on an aspect of rural technology or culture. The Senate Spittoons I learned about years later in, I think, Harpers magazine.)

figleaf

dipping is bad and it causes nothing but trouble i mean who wants to throw up and its trouble when you have to hide it and clean your teath and who wants to kiss someone that dips
-deleon,nickolas

and brett rogers agrees that its nasty

kaylynn is gay

not really
makayla is

brett joseph rogers thinks its freaking discusting!!!!

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) phys. ed. class WOULD chew while playing ice hockey.... " for herself for herself, for himself for himself too as well to boot, for himself for himself too as well to boot, for ANYONE whoso accepts also that this even claims also, Aloha also und Thanks also to Thomas in Raleigh for that this i of his said responses to this i of such a said Green, White Und Light my colour ( Canadian und plus N. Zealander style spelling ) Blue Wave ace instructor's at Tulane's, Dr. Wade's said accounts for ' ' ' ' ' ' SocietyP's ( for SHORT ) ' ' ' ' ' ' said site's said Webpage on that und it with it with it now here on BOTH life with Sociological Images und plus life also even with Chewing Tobacco And Its Aristocracy STILL counters also SCARILY lamentingly also that in this case also, " A kid in my grade eight's ( 8's ) ( viii's ) phys. ed. ( for SHORT ) class WOULD chew while playing ice hockey.... " him/herself for him/herself, for ' ' ' ' ' ' Phans ( und NOT just for ' ' ' ' ' ' Phans ' ' ' ' ' ' in Juneau, Austin und/NOR Montgomery und/NOR Raleigh und/NOR Baton Rouge und/NOR London, NEITHER, ), ' ' ' ' ' ' for OUTSIDERS, for readers, for visitors, for others also und even for us, too....