Could a scheme for licensing smokers work in Australia?

To the Editor: Magnusson and Currow’s “no-frills” version1 of my proposal for a smokers licence2 places reduction of sales to children as its main goal and removes “non-core” features. Gone are precommitment daily purchasing limits as well as the major financial incentive to surrender the licence by middle age. This effectively guts the major components designed to reduce consumption and stimulate cessation.

Prioritising uptake prevention over policies designed to reduce adult smoking may sound sensible, but as they noted, the 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey showed that only 2.5% of 12–17-year-olds smoked daily, the lowest on record. Moreover, total under-age tobacco consumption by secondary school students was only just over 100 million cigarettes in 2011 (based on average reported consumption of 17.16 cigarettes per week for the 44 683 children aged 12–15 years and 22.66 cigarettes for the 57 328 students aged 16–17 years).3 This is less than 0.5% of the 22 billion cigarettes and equivalents that were subject to excise and customs duty in the same year.4 The major focus of tobacco control in Australia today is therefore on better motivating adult smokers to quit. Accordingly, the primary focus of my licensing proposal is about adult smokers.

The tobacco industry has a long history of cynically supporting tobacco purchasing policies centred on minors needing to produce age identification.5 They know that support for such policies lends them a veneer of corporate responsibility while making no difference to the ability of children to access cigarettes bought by friends aged over 18 years.6 Precommitment purchasing limits for all licensed smokers would effectively stop any widespread supply of cigarettes by licensed adults to children, as each adult would have access to only a maximum of 50 cigarettes a day — insufficient to generate any significant income for onsellers or make this a major problem.

Magnusson and Currow’s suggestion that the scheme would not be self-funding because smokers could claim 100% of all licence fees paid on licence surrender assumes that all smokers would eventually surrender their licence. Many would not, and their collective, cumulative licence fees would always provide a pool of funding for the administration of the scheme.

They erroneously state that my proposal would require all adult smokers to sit a smoking knowledge test to get a licence. This requirement would be only for those turning 18 who wanted to start legally purchasing tobacco for the first time. At the commencement of the scheme, any adult wanting to obtain a licence could so do.