Rationing cigarettes to smokers worth a try

While I am in favour of the Government banning sales of cigarettes altogether, I understand that this will be too radical and hence difficult to enforce in reality.

Conversely, educating the public will not be effective as smokers have the prerogative on whether to quit the vice. The temptations in public and constant pressures from their peers are also too irresistible.

I suggest taking the middle path of enforcing rationing of cigarettes to the public, where every smoker is allocated a certain quantity per month.

Smokers would have to display their identification cards before making any purchases. Their particulars would be automatically scanned and stored in an online national database, which would keep track of the monthly consumption of smokers. Whenever a smoker has exhausted his quota of cigarettes allocated to them, he or she would, in theory, not be able to make further purchases.

All cigarette vendors would have to strictly comply with the new law, failing which their tobacco sales licence would be revoked or they would be penalised with demerits points. One, however, needs to note that despite the controlled and limited quantities of this commodity, the selling price of cigarettes should still remain the same.

Naturally, the smokers concerned would invariably try to circumvent the law by leveraging on their friends or acquaintances to make further purchases on their behalf.

But the idea is to create more inconveniences to smokers. With a fixed allotted amount of cigarettes each month, hopefully, smokers would gradually adjust their nicotine requirement and reduce their consumption of cigarettes incrementally. The ultimate goal is for them to eventually kick the habit altogether in the long term.