ASH, 102 Clifton Street, LONDON, EC2A 4HW.
Tel 020 7739 5902 Fax 020 7613 0531

ASH Daily News
24 - 27 December 2001


HEADLINES

“Free Fags” website challenges British Government in European Court
Nottingham University’s deal with BAT “the worst decision of the year” according to Tutors’ Union
Pro-smoking campaigner scoffs at health concerns.


FULL TEXT
“Free Fags” website challenges British Government in European Court

A COMPANY that delivers half-price cigarettes to your door is creating smoke rings in the European Parliament over the "discriminatory" import duties that force Britons to pay more for their gaspers than the Continentals.
Freefags.com, a website which sources duty-paid cigarettes from Spain and posts them to your home, has had various run-ins with HM Customs & Excise, which routinely seizes packages for its customers unless they pay extra duty. Duty per pack of 20 cigarettes is only 70p in Spain, but £3.50 in Britain.
The company has enlisted Spanish MEP Rosa Miguelez Ramos to put its case. She presented a written petition to the European Parliament earlier this month arguing that the British Government is levying "covert import duties" by placing extra taxes on products bought within the European Union.
Freefags founder Chris Brooks goes further still. He reckons current UK law infringes human rights legislation because it does not give everyone the same chance to smoke cheap cigarettes.
Freefags claim they get round existing rules by giving away a “free” case of 200 Benson and Hedges when each customer buys a disposable lighter – for £22.
This does not impress the Customs men, however, who claim that far from sending a gift through the post, which would be legal, Mr Brooks is "distance selling".
This means both UK excise duty and VAT must be paid and failure to do so is illegal. Where it spots such contraband, Customs confiscates the goods and sends a "notice of seizure" to the client, saying their cigarettes will be destroyed within a month unless they lodge an appeal.
First offenders are warned that "if any further detections are made which result in excise goods being seized from you", they could be prosecuted in the civil rather than criminal courts.
Source: Daily Telegraph.
Full story:
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2001/12/26/cnfag26.xml&sSheet=/money/2001/12/27/ixcoms.html

Nottingham University’s deal with BAT “the worst decision of the year” according to Tutors’ Union
The Government must establish a watchdog to ensure commercial companies cannot interfere with academics' research and censor their findings, the university tutors' union said yesterday.
The Association of University Teachers is concerned that the increasing tendency of companies to sponsor universities threatens to jeopardise academic independence.
The union's latest figures show more than 12 per cent of all research grants and contracts are from private sources. It wants a powerful "sleazebuster" to head a commission into academic freedom, and has called for a register of universities' interests.
The union called the University of Nottingham's decision to accept £3.8m from British American Tobacco to fund an International Centre in Corporate Responsibility as "the worst decision of the year". Tobacco sponsorship topped the list of "unethical financial deals" in a review of university research and funding in 2001, the union said.

Source, The Independent, The Guardian
Full Story: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/education/story.jsp?story=111772

Pro-smoking campaigner scoffs at health concerns

A new report by FOREST claims to give the lie to a number of health scares, with the real intention of muddying the issue of the dangers of passive smoking by linking it to other, less well researched, health scares. The report, by FOREST staffer Josephine Gaffakin, claims that the “hysterical and often dubious nature of many warnings” were signs of an increasingly unhealthy preoccupation with health – citing reports that thinking too hard can strain the brain and that liquorice eaters have babies earlier. Unsurprisingly – given its source - the report also concludes that the effect of passive smoking on non-smokers is a similar scare.

Source: The Guardian, the Mirror.
Full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4325888,00.html








Visit http://TobaccoPedia.org !