Letter: Tobacco row

Your article ("Ash backlash after nine out of 10 reject tobacco display ban", 11 September) does not report that those responding to this consultation were doing so on the proposed regulations surrounding how a retail tobacco display ban will be implemented in 2013. This legislation was passed by an overwhelming majority of the Scottish Parliament in January.

As a seller of a highly-lucrative yet addictive and lethal product, Daniel Torras is, of course, opposed to measures that aim to prevent him marketing his product to young people - the main source of new recruits to smoking. As a managing director of JTI, the third-biggest tobacco company in the world, he will do all he can to protect his company's global sales worth $9.6 billion (6.3bn).

Smoking is still Scotland's biggest preventable killer and a quarter of all adult deaths in Scotland are tobacco related.

It is incumbent on all of us to do all we can to prevent young people from smoking and improve our public health.

One of the measures that will contribute to this is stopping cigarettes having pride of place in our all shops.

SHEILA DUFFY

Chief executive

Ash Scotland

Sheila Duffy states in her letter (10 September) that there is "absolutely" no evidence that the smoking ban has been responsible for the closure of many Scottish pubs. "Absolutely" usually means "none at all", "not even a trace".

Does she think David Edes, who the previous day gave a graphic account of how the ban forced him to close his pub, Oliver Griffiths of C5 Consulting and Paul Waterston of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association are fictional characters, or suffering from a delusion since they hold views at variance with her own?

Her colleague Amanda Sandford claims the survey was "misleading" and did not reflect "the reality of the licensed trade". Ash would seem to have greater knowledge of this trade than its practitioners and professional representatives.

So that's doubtless some relief to those of us less clued up in other people's business.

KEN McLEOD

Ralston Drive

Kirkcaldy, Fife