{"content":"<div class=\"ffb-id-13bb0g6q fg-paragraph ff-richtext text-left    fg-text-dark\">\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Trade analysts Citigroup Smith Barney made the following comment on the Irish market in September 2004: \u201cOnce again, the month-by-month data continues to look worrying. Overall, we believe the ban has probably reduced consumption by 5%. It will also make recruiting new smokers, and marketing to all smokers, much harder, we believe\u201d (10). In April 2005 they said: \u201cInvestors currently are most concerned about the impact of bans in bars and public places. The impact in Ireland has been quite severe, probably between 5-7% on volume\u201d (11).<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The investment bank Morgan Stanley speculated on the possible impact of a smoking ban in the UK: \u201cAccording to our estimates a complete UK smoking ban may reduce consumption by an incremental 4%-5%, but we would expect manufacturers to offset the impact of lost volumes through price increases, an approach which seems to have worked in Ireland\u201d (12). Even the impact of the Italian law, which is less strict than the Irish ban and which allows closed, designated and ventilated smoking rooms, was feared by the stock analysts. Morgan Stanley described the situation in Italy in their 29 June 2005 analysis thus: \u201cItaly. Indications from the most recent Nielson retail data that despite increasingly warmer weather \u2013 which would presumably moderate the adverse impact of the January 2005 indoor smoking ban \u2013 the pace of cigarette consumption decline has unfortunately not significantly moderated\u201d (13). Data from Italy show that 28.3 million kg of cigarettes were sold in the period January to April 2005, compared with 31.1 in the same period in 2004, a reduction of 9% (14).<\/p>\r\n<\/div>","hash":"a86f96522073a8a05c05765ef7842fa5","css":"","js":""}