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ASH Daily News
18 December 2001


HEADLINES

Gallaher helped by UK customs crackdown
Smokers Blindness
British American Racing Boss Axed.


FULL TEXT
Gallaher helped by UK customs crackdown

GALLAHER, the tobacco company, is losing sales in Western Europe because of efforts by the Government to fight the smuggling of cigarettes into Britain. However, increased legal sales in the UK are off-setting this, to mean that Gallaher are actually benefitting from the crack-down.

The company yesterday said sales volumes in Belgium and The Netherlands had fallen in the past year because trade suppliers were buying fewer cigarettes as cross-Channel traffickers are scared off.

The company, whose chief executive is Nigel Northridge, said that sales in the UK, where margins are higher, had offset the continental decrease so that profits for the year-end are not expected to suffer. “As less smuggled product enters Britain, so smokers buy more duty-paid product,” a spokesman said.

Shares in Gallaher, which makes Benson & Hedges cigarettes, rose 3½p to 445¼p.

Source, The Times (full Story http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,5-2001582501,00.html), Daily Express, The Independent.


Smokers' Blindness.
Smokers are up to 5 times more likely to become blind than non-smokers, according to new research. Those consuming more than a packet of cigarettes a day were particularly at risk.
Smoking has been identified as the strongest environmental health factor for Age-Related Macular Degeneration, the leading cause of irrevable blindness in the West. People who smoke were 2 to 5 times more likely to develop AMD, according to a study in the medical journal of Australia. It is thought that smoking might be responsible for about 20% of all blindness in the over-50s. Early symptoms of AMD include the distortion of imgaes' shape and colour. Sight may become blurry, with dark sports appearing in the field of vision.

Sourse: Express, 18/12/01

British American Racing Boss Axed.

David Richards, the most powerful man in world rallying, will become the new principal with the British American Racing formula one team after Craig Pollock yesterday resigned as managing director of the company he founded three years ago.

Pressure from British American Tobacco in the face of consistently poor results from the Honda-engined cars are understood to be behind Pollock's departure.

BAT has invested more than £150m in the team which was founded in 1999 and has yet to demonstrate anything but average results, although Villeneuve finished third in the Spanish and German grands prix this year.

"I am extremely proud of what has been achieved at British American Racing," said Pollock yesterday. "I believe the foundations there have been laid to achieve great success in the future."
Source: The Guardian: http://sport.guardian.co.uk/motorracing/story/0,10153,620397,00.html







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