License to Smoke?

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

"License to Smoke" is an idea to help wind down the tobacco industry and end the tobacco epidemic by preventing future generations from smoking.

Background

In formulating this idea, I had to come to some not too palatable truths. There is no quick fix. Apart from the tobacco industry itself, there are many other organizations who seek to gain financially from this powerful drug. Manufacturers of the Patch, Nicorette, Cancer research, and of course the government itself are just as addicted to the profits and taxes on their wares as the smokers are to the nicotine. Noone associated with this industry has any interest in seeing it die. So what can be done?

Proposed solution

Every person achieving the legal age to consume tobacco products, by a ONE TIME date, (e.g. December 31st. 2010) pre-determined by law, will be permitted to apply for, and receive a license to purchase tobacco products for the remainder of their lives. Following that date, no one will ever be allowed to receive a license to do the same. The distribution of those licenses would be handled by driver license bureaus because they already exist and it would overcome the expense of setting up alternate offices. The licenses would probably look similar to a driver's license, with a photo, finger prints, retina scan or whatever the law might permit. This idea would not penalize those who already smoke. This plan would give an approximate sixty-year window to all interested parties to divest and reinvest in other revenue-gaining activities. I believe sixty years is a fair warning.

Those of us who do smoke and have suffered the financial and health-related problems associated with this terrible drug, have no interest in seeing future generations adopt what is politely called a "habit."

I believe this law would be highly popular with both smokers and non-smokers. As long as governments can see the benefit of the votes, they will be behind it.

Smoking is like Global Warming in that almost everyone agrees something must be done about it, but no one wants to start the ball rolling.

Doing it this way means the job will be done. It's just going to take a long time, but as far as I can see it has to be in order for it to be acceptable and to work.

Contact

Idea presented by Mark Malden
Toronto, Canada
For more information on this idea, contact: mark_maldenAThotmail.com (substitute an "@" sign for the "AT")