Sir; If this government is really serious about stamping out tobacco smuggling, it's got a very strange way of going about it. I'm referring to the persecution of law abiding Scottish retailers by Customs & Excise officers (The Grocer, August 25, p6). I find it astonishing that while organised criminals with tonnes of smuggled cigarettes seem to pass with impunity through Customs & Excise checkpoints at our ports, Customs & Excise officers are wasting their time and taxpayers' money enforcing the new legislation on pack marking. They didn't even care whether the out-of-date packs had been taken off the shelves. If they were on the premises, even in a back office, they were seized. If they were half as efficient in spotting the real criminals as they are in cracking down on us retailers, then we wouldn't have a smuggling problem at all. To add insult to injury, the profits from tobacco are hardly worth the effort. If it wasn't for the impulse trade associated with smokers, I don't think any of us would sell tobacco because the margins are so poor. But the meagre profits at the retail end of the market don't seem to apply at the tobacco manufacturers' end. When did we last read about a tobacco company struggling to make a profit? And these super rich multinationals certainly didn't do retailers any favours in coping with the new pack marking. They dragged their feet in introducing the new packs, giving us insufficient time to sell slower moving lines before the new law came into effect. And then they had the cheek to offer frankly insulting terms for any returned packs, and suggested we'd all be better off selling the old stock off cheap before the law came in. LIttle wonder that retailers got caught out. Name and address supplied {{LETTERS }}