Smart card licenses and enforced quotas proposed to combat smoking

A public health professor has published a paper proposing that smokers be forced to apply for licences and given weekly quotas.

In his paper, published in PLOS Medicine, Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health says that by issuing every smoker with a paid-for smartcard to buy cigarettes, governments will be able to gather data the health authorities can then use in anti-smoking campaigns.

Every time they buy a pack of cigarettes the smart card will need to be swiped and, depending on what annual license level the individual has purchased, the numbers will be totted up and they will be cut off when they reach their maximum weekly limit (70 per week, 140 per week or 350 per week). The higher the limit, the more the licence will cost, deterring, says Chapman, lower-income individuals: "Poor smokers, as a group, are known to be more responsive to price than those on higher incomes, in terms of both quitting and reducing use." This may perturb the world's one billion smokers, 80 percent of which, according to the World Health Organisation, reside in low- and middle-income countries.

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