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ASH Daily News
14 November 2002

HEADLINES

UK tobacco companies suffer £700m slump
Cannabis
Passion smoking


FULL TEXT


UK tobacco companies suffer £700m slump

Almost £700m was wiped off the stock market value of the UK’s three biggest
tobacco companies yesterday following a nervous statement from Philip
Morris, the US manufacturer of brands such as Marlboro.

Late on Tuesday Philip Morris backed away from its 2003 earnings forecast,
blaming an influx of counterfeit and cheap cigarettes combined with
increased tobacco taxes and a slowing of the US economy.

Shares in BAT fell 3.3 percent to about 645.5p a share, wiping about £480m
off the company’s market value yesterday. Gallaher, which is widely seen as
an acquisition target for BAT, fell 2.4 percent to 640p and Imperial Tobacco
slumped just 1.3 percent to 998p.

Source: The Times, 14 November 2002



Cannabis

There is more coverage in the papers on cannabis. Clive Bates, director of
Action on Smoking and Health writes in to The Independent and The Guardian,
urging caution on the findings of a recent report on cannabis. The report by
the British Lung Foundation claims that smoking 3 cannabis cigarettes is as
harmful as smoking 20 cigarettes a day, and that the cannabis is now 15
times more potent than the 1960s and 70s.

Clive Bates points out that the reported increase in the strength of
cannabis is not necessarily a cause for alarm: "Even if there is 15 times as
much active ingredient in modern cannabis it is unlikely that today’s
smokers are 15 times as stoned as their predecessors in the 1960s. It is
plausible that cannabis smokers control their dose by varying their smoking
pattern – as it has been shown for nicotine. Stronger cannabis may therefore
mean that less smoke is inhaled for a given dose of the active ingredient."

In today’s Guardian, Mr Bates continues: “This is not to argue that cannabis
is safe. The most important factor will be lifetime exposure. Because
tobacco is so addictive, it is not unusual for a smoker to consume 20
cigarettes a day for 40 years. But such heavy and sustained cannabis use is
rare. Any comparison of risk needs to include the different ways the
products are used over a lifetime; the neat 3:20 formulation cannot do
that.”

Guardian letter:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,839361,00.html
Source:
The Independent, 13 November 2002,
The Guardian, 14 November 2002



Passion smoking

Alex Bottomley writes in to the Independent about smoking in public places,
and succinctly demonstrates the typical do-today-worry-tomorrow attitudes
young people have towards smoking and its health risks. He says: “If you go
out, you accept that you’ll come into contact with cigarette smoke. As a
young man, in a bar you drink poison, risk being attacked by drunken louts
outside and are more often than not attempting to have sex with strangers.
Second hand fag smoke is the least of your health concerns.”

Alex is a non-smoker [with priorities].

Source: The Independent, 14 November 2002



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Naj Dehlavi
Action on Smoking and Health
102 Clifton Street
London EC2A 4HW
http://www.ash.org.uk