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ASH Daily News

19 November 2004

HEADLINES

Pubs' smoking ban hangover will clear
Lord Hanson in mafia links allegation
Opinion: Quitting isn't "cool" - yet
Forest's latest recruits
Village tops tobacco spending league
Hollywood's smokescreen
USA: Tobacco case goes to appeal
Ireland: COPD worry as GPs call for cigarette price hike

FULL TEXT

Pubs' smoking ban hangover will clear

The big US securities house Goldman Sachs thinks that drinkers, landlords and investors have nothing to fear over the newly announced smoking restrictions.

It says the impact on profits is likely to be small. "In our view, this four year period will prove very important in allowing pubs to adapt and should mean the initial impact of the ban is less damaging to trade than has so far been the case in Ireland," said drinks analyst Patrick Hargreaves at Goldman.

This will be welcomed by investors who saw big falls in pubcos shares earlier this week. Punch, JD Wetherspoons and Mitchells and Butler were among the casualties.

Source: Evening Standard, 18 November 2004


Lord Hanson in mafia links allegation

A police inquiry into Lord Hanson, the late business tycoon has uncovered suspicious links with leading US mafia families in which he had a stake. The documents have been seen by the Financial Times and reported in the Evening Standard.

A number of the findings in the police report were confirmed in a separate investigation commissioned by Imperial Tobacco when it became the subject of a takeover bid by Lord Hanson in 1986. Imperial would not be drawn on the allegations, but according to a police report, a US Customs investigation found that smugglers had established a distribution network in Arizona and the south-west US. Illegal immigrants from Mexico were used as mules to ferry heroin.

"It (the report) went to the top of Imperial. They wouldn't let it be used," was a former Imperial adviser's explanation. He thought Imperial was afraid of using the material they had uncovered.

The suspicion is that Lord Hanson, who died on November 2, was linked with the Gambino and Genovese organised crime families. The association was revealed following a confidential report by the Metropolitan Police.

Source: Evening Standard (18th), Financial Times, 19 November 2004


Opinion: Quitting isn't "cool" - yet

Ex-Tory MP and former junior Health Minister Edwina Currie thinks a different tact should be adopted in the battle against smoking. She has always lived with smokers; her father and first and second husbands. Ms Currie is an asthmatic and does not enjoy the ash, cigarette ends and burn holes.

Recalling her experience in the Health Department she writes: "We persuaded the tobacco industry to reduce the tar content of cigarettes and promote "modern" filter-tipped brands. That's why JJ (her husband) now smokes Silk Cut instead of Player's. The drop in lung cancer among men is directly attributable to this change. We pushed for labelling which was eventually adopted throughout Europe; I'm sure it helps. Most of all, we made it cool and sassy to be a non-smoker, with ciggies the hallmark of scruffy old geezers. That worked too, at least for men."

Her concern now however is the rise in the number of women smokers. What is called for here, she believes, is a demonstration to smokers of just what a "dirty, disgusting habit" they have. Ms Currie deploys some blunt and colourful language designed to goad attractive, young role models like Kate Moss into stubbing out.

Source: Daily Express, 19 November 2004


Forest's latest recruits

Forest, the mouth piece of the tobacco industry has recruited a number of business figures to its council in an attempt to head off the proposed smoking ban in offices, bars and restaurants.

They include Trevor Bayliss, publisher Felix Dennis and restaurateur, Antony Worrall Thompson. Sir Terrence Conran, who has also been drafted in declared: "I was a supporter of Tony Blair, but he should allow restaurants to decide their own smoking policies."

Source: Evening Standard, 18 November 2004


Village tops tobacco spending league

Residents of a Peak District village spend more on tobacco than anywhere else in the country, according to research.

The people of Gamesley, Derbyshire spend on average £552 a year on tobacco, according to consumer analysis company CACI. Second in the table is Arundel in Liverpool, where the average spend is £534. Nechells in Birmingham is third, dispensing £515.

By contrast in Great Holland, North Bracknell, Berkshire, people only spend £68 per head on smoking. They are followed by Westbrook, Warrington (£120) and Molesey South in Surrey (£121).

The report's author Patrick Tait said: "There is a very clear link between income and tobacco spend. The research clearly shows that the lower the average income is, the higher the money spent on tobacco is."

Source: Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, 19 November 2004


Hollywood's smokescreen

Whilst surfing the internet for references to cigarettes in film, columnist for the Independent Tom Sutcliffe chanced upon a website dedicated to categorising films on the basis of their depiction of tobacco usage.

The American Lung Association of Sacramento awarded the film Finding Nemo a pink lung icon, whilst the recent remake of Alfie received a disapproving black lung logo. "Alfie will have bigger problems than finding girls if he doesn't put down his cigarettes," the tobacco website watcher notes.

Mr Sutcliffe observes that: "Stubbing out is in the spirit of the times, and this week's smoking bans in restaurants would only seem to confirm that the days of the on-screen fag or numbered. And yet if anything, exactly the opposite is happening. There are probably more cigarettes in movies right now than there were five years ago and the past few months alone must have had the compilers (at the American Lung Association) very busy indeed."

Source: The Independent, 19 November 2004
American Lung association: http://www.scenesmoking.org/


USA: Tobacco case goes to appeal

The US government's efforts to prove that tobacco companies used fraud and depiction for decades to keep Americans smoking moved into the federal appeals court this week. Both sides argued over the crunch issue central to the case: whether forcing the tobacco industry to give back profit is permissible under civil racketeering law.

At stake is $280 billion which the government claims is ill-gotten profit deriding from a 50 year conspiracy to mask the dangers of passive smoking.

Source: International Herald Tribune, 19 November 2004


Ireland: COPD worry as GPs call for cigarette price hike

Many patients who find themselves in trolleys in A&E departments are suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) - a potentially fatal lung disease, according to Professor Shane O'Neill of Beaumont Hospital, Dublin.

The respiratory physician said that most of the COPD cases were a result of smoking.

The professor's findings come in the wake of calls from doctors to raise the price of cigarettes and alcohol. The Irish Medical association (IMO), in a pre-budget submission has advocated a price increase. Public health specialist Joe Barry said: "Recent controversies in A&E have shown that the public has begun to make the connection between harmful alcohol consumption and the capacity problem at A&E."

Source: Irish News (Belfast) (16th), Irish Independent, 18 November 2004

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Harold Wilson
ASH
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