Alfred Dunhill the London luxury goods manufacturer was long the best-known traditonal retailer of smoker's requisites

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Alfred Dunhill, the London luxury goods manufacturer, was long the best-known traditonal retailer of smoker's requisites. Howard Smith, the archivist who looks after its museum of memorabilia in Jermyn Street, said: "It's like anything - as soon as you put a ban on something you immediately get a demand for it coming through. Things like cigarette lighters, cards and packets are all collected and there seems to be a growing demand for them."It's all down to this business of scarcity value. I think people with business acumen may look at it as an investment for 20 or 30 years down the line."In the UK, tobacco advertising rules have tended to bestricter. In Greenwich Village, the owner of The Smoking Shop has had offers up to $1,000 for a life-size bust of Joe Camel.With the British government now looking at stricter rules on tobacco advertising, it is more than likely that the market for tobacco-related items and advertising will go the same way. But while banished from his day job, his destiny may lie in a more lucrative market. Canny American collectors have realised that if smoking paraphernalia is harder to come by because of the ban, then the potential for cashing in on cigarette memorabilia is huge.A collectables store in Manhattan which sells cigarette vending machines says it now expects to get around $2,000 for a machine that only a month ago would have sold for between $300 and $700.

"You go on death row, you're gonna find most people have been abused in their lives and are poor."Rich people don't go to prison They don't go to death row, that's for sure.". Many are in it for the money; some are simply addicted to it; for others it's about the art; but whatever the reason, collecting cigarette paraphernalia is a booming business. In the US, if Congress passes legislation banning tobacco advertising using human and cartoon characters, the Marlboro Man, along with Joe Camel, will ride off into the sunset. "Lesbians have consistently been portrayed as predatory and violent But the other big factor in the South is prejudice.

The fundamentalist religious Right there is the strongest political movement and there is a very strong belief in the death penalty, too."Schmidt gained access to Andrea Jackson (left), a young black woman who killed a police officer and who has been waiting on death row in Florida since 1984. Instead, it asks why, if only 1 per cent of convicted murderers are sentenced to death, is it that so many of the chosen few are lesbians?It is a judicial distortion which she believes is partly fostered by the glamorous images of warped homicidal lesbians used in films such as Basic Instinct, Heavenly Creatures and the British film Butterfly Kiss. During her trial the jury was told she hated to be touched by men.Jackson sees her own experience as just part of the unfairness of a process which discriminates against several groups. Statistics show they are more likely to be victims than perpetrators," she says.Her film does not set out to suggest that any of these women are innocent. "The idea is repeatedly put over that the defendant is not normal."Gay organisations in the States have tended to play down the trend.