[neoflex]

The smell you are smelling is the MDF used for the construction of the box. It was made out of MDF with a Cedar sleeve. If you were to pull the sticks out of the foil and let them rest in there unwrapped oddly enough that smell does go away. At a recent event when no one else was around I pointed it out to Pete. He quickly grabbed a box off the shelf to check it out but the box on the shelf was used as a display and the sticks were unwrapped and that is where I found out that the MDF smell does go away as it seems to absorb the smell of the tobacco pretty well as I couldn't even get the smell of MDF from that box until I smelled the lid which was kept off the box.
I told him that my box and others smelled like fresh cut wood and that is when he told me about the construction of the box and informed me that I was most likely smelling the MDF. Needless to say after seeing or should I say smelling the display box at the shop where the event was held I no longer worried about any ill effects from storing the sticks in the box.