Canada: ID Cards to Curb Underage Smoking

Source from:  Haliburton County (ONT) Echo (ca)  01/30/2013

Ten years is a long time to wait.

However, for Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Heath Unit tobacco control officers Lorne Jordan and Kris Kadwell it's well worth it since hearing driver's licenses will include a "visual age indicator."

Led by the Not to Kids coalition and the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Public Health, this recent effort has resulted in the Ministry of Transportation authorizing the change.

"It's nice to see people are open to changing things where there are benefits to making the change," Jordan said.

In the past, he said, some lobbying efforts fell "on deaf ears."

Specifically, he remembers the delay behind making vehicles smoke free for children under 16.

It took several years after the Smoke Free Act was passed to have it amended. Another "hole in the act" is that people can still smoke on restaurant patios.

Effective Jan. 1, all licenses for anyone under 19 will clearly indicate when they are of the age of majority.

This change to licenses eliminates issues experienced by retailers who had difficulty calculating when a person turned 19. Prior to the change, the health unit had issued an assisting card with completed calculations to determine age.

While both Kadwell and Jordan are happy, the proposal 10 years ago wasn't even this good.

"I wasn't looking for something as good as this because what this actually does is it actually says right on it is this person is not 19 until this date," Kadwell said. "There are no calculations involved."

The age indicator is to be highlighted or colour coded in some way, which will also help anyone checking at a dimly lit venue.

Ontario and Quebec were the only regions in North America not to have visual age indicators on licenses. Every U.S. state has some iteration of an age indicator on their driver's licenses.

Close to 93 per cent of retailers in the health unit's region comply with the law,  as "test shopper" operations by the health unit revealed.

"Now I believe this will allow us to present a more realistic scenario in the future. Not this year, but maybe a couple of years once they're established. We can send our test shoppers in with their driving licenses to not only ensure them that these stores are asking for identification, but also ensuring that they are viewing it and … making the right decision not to sell tobacco [to minors]," Kadwell said.

Jordan said the Proposal for Visual Age Indicators on Ontario Driver's Licenses, which provided background on why and how, was the most effective tool in the yearlong effort.

"It was the major convincer once we got media on board," he said.

Within a month the ministry said they would do it.

Jordan, who refers to this action as a "broad spectrum of cascading benefits" said the ministry's initial reluctance came from the idea that the driver's license would lose its function "for purposes that were not strictly related to the Highway Traffic Act as a driver's license, but the driver's license is used almost universally to buy tobacco, to buy alcohol, to buy lottery tickets. It's just the all-purpose ID that seems to be used for everything."

In terms of combating counterfeiting, Kadwell said, nothing is guaranteed.

"It's just more difficult because there will be two areas where they have to get in there to change them," Kadwell said.

This was a step in the right direction, but the work is far from over for Jordan.

Efforts continue to legislate against counterfeit identification, help people in multi-unit dwellings who suffer from second-hand smoke inhalation from neighbours, ridding fleet vehicles such as taxi cabs from cigarette smoke and making all outdoor recreation facilities smoke free. Enditem