Sydney (dpa) - What next - after the imposition of sky-high taxes,
the curbing of sales, bans on advertising and display and a
world-first obligation on tobacco companies to sell cigarettes in
plain packets?
Sydney University public health expert Simon Chapman has urged the
Australian government to get further in front by issuing smokers with
annual licences that would specify the number of cigarettes they
could buy.
Giving up and surrendering the licence would be rewarded with the
reimbursement, with interest, of all the fees paid. If you quit at
40, for example, you might be looking at a windfall of a few thousand
dollars.
"If you put an extra dollar on a pack and put that into the
incentive fund, the person quitting would get all that money back as
well," Chapman said.
A particular glory of the licensing system would be a streamlined
anti-smoking campaign, with health authorities benefiting from having
a list of smokers' addresses and details of their habit. Someone who,
for example, showed resolve one year about giving up by claiming 10
cigarettes a day rather than 20 could be targeted with an individual
incentive to take that last step.
Chapman wants governments to be bold in their thinking and treat
tobacco like the dangerous substance it is.
"Products that promote health, or ease pain or prolong your life
are handed out very judiciously," he said. "You've got to go through
a doctor and you get from the doctor what is in effect a temporary
licence to consume a limited quantity of those products."
Cigarettes, in contrast, are freely available to any adult.
A permit to pollute your lungs would give official recognition to
the link between smoking and cancer.
"Tobacco is sold in the way it is because the mode of commerce was
established long before the evidence was in about the harms of
smoking," Chapman said. "But we've had that evidence since the 1950s
and we continue to treat it like it was a commodity like bread and
milk."
Sure, the system would be complex. Licensed tobacco retailers
would need a swipe-card reader and be forbidden from selling to
anyone without a licence. Those applying for a licence would take a
test to see whether they fully understood the perils of smoking.
That the tobacco industry would fight the initiative tooth and
nail was evident from a statement that British American Tobacco plc
issued this year.
"We understand that some people don't like smoking," the company
said in a response to No Smoking Day. "And it's their right to feel
like that. Many adults, however, enjoy smoking and will continue to
do so and it's their right to do that too. We sell a controversial
product, but it's a legal one."
Jeff Collin, a public health specialist from Scotland's Edinburgh
University, condemned Chapman's proposal from a different
perspective, saying the focus of anti-smoking campaigns should stay
with the providers, rather than shift to consumers.
Another obvious criticism is that, if tobacco is so harmful, why
not bite the bullet and ban it?
"There would be chaos," Chapman said. "Some people are profoundly
addicted. It would be a recipe for a very serious black market
supplying those desperate people."
Copyright 2012 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH