“License to smoke”
Een Australische anti-roker voorspelt dat het niet lang meer zal duren of rokers zullen een examen af moeten leggen waarin ze tonen op de hoogte te zijn van de gezondheidseffecten van roken. Simon Chapman, die al eens ooit veroordeeld werd voor het verduisteren van bewijsmateriaal tegen meeroken, fantaseert hierover:
“Like all ideas like this, it will probably be in the paper tomorrow with exclamation marks all over it, but 15 years from now it may be seen as what you do.”
Simon Chapman, of Sydney University, said smokers might have to pass exams about tobacco addiction and its deadly impact on health.
“I don’t think it is inconceivable or absurd to suggest that, down the track, governments could introduce a licensing scheme for tobacco users,” he told state MPs reviewing the anti-smoking laws.
“Just as a young person of the age of 17 goes along to the RTA and gets a big fat book, pays for it and reads it and then has to go and do a test, the same would apply to a person who wished to become a smoker.
“He or she would go along, sit for a test and be given a licence to smoke on the understanding that they knew the risks they were taking.
“Then they would be able to put their card over the counter and say: ‘I want a carton of Benson and Hedges.’
