Sports sponsorship

Press, 22 November 1989, Page 20

Sports sponsorship

Sir,—Ms Sue Hampton’s piece in “The Press” lambasting A.S.H. for the anti-tobacco work it does made me sad. Tobacco and brewery interests are in sport sponsorship to sell more of their wares, and those wares are the curse of our beautiful country. If Ms Hampton were my age, and

had seen as many good friends die slow agonising deaths through the use of these products, she might not hold the same opinions. If it comes down to kicking a bundle of rags about for a football — as I did in my boyhood — then so be it, but we didn’t need any sponsorship before we started our game. I would like to read a piece from Ms Hampton on, say, a night spent as a spectator at the casualty department at a hospital at a week-end, or I could take her to see a dearly loved member of my family who is ever-so-slowly being suffocated by the growing cancer in her lungs. I say a pox on the advertisers of misery and death. — Yours, etc., T. WALLER. November 18, 1989.