http://www.crikey.com.au/Blogs/Croakey/Should-we-pay-Indigenous-Australians-to-stop-smoking.html

Kevin Rudd has announced a $14.5m injection of funds to lower smoking in Indigenous communities. Indigenous Australians smoke at around 2.5 times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians, with rates being as high as 80% in some communities. That prevalence is one of the key reasons that Indigenous Australians are twice as likely to die within five years of a cancer diagnosis than non-Indigenous people, says the Cancer Council Australia. That's because "cancers caused by smoking are among the most difficult to treat successfully."

Few will see this investment as anything but overdue. But how could it be spent most effectively rather than squandered on legions of endless rounds of tiny interventions?

A paper in last week's Lancet poses an intriguing question.

In a report from Mexico, the Oportunidades program, which sees dirt poor Mexican villagers given "Conditional Cash Transfers" (CCTs) if they comply with a set of requirements such as attending health care, using free food supplements and enrolling kids in school, has seen remarkable improvements in increased height for age, reduced stunting, and reduced obesity. The program across Mexico involves 20 million families and the evaluated component reported in the Lancet saw 90% of families in the trial areas volunteering to participate -- only 1% were refused payment for failing to comply.

Sounds promising, where are the Rudd-bashers now?

So there's no praise for Rudd for continuing something that is working?

So what do you think about the idea of paying people directly to stop smoking? It doesn't play into the epic Howard vs Rudd battle, so you may have to come up with your own opinion.

RecFisher wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2008 at 12:23pm:



Why?  He inherited the brilliant idea from Johnny.

deepthought wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2008 at 6:10pm:



Just like he inherited the economy and rising inflation and rising interest rates.

freediver wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2008 at 12:29pm:


It does when the Liberal faithful won't pay credit where due but are quick to bash Labor for changing other Howard policies.

Personally, I'm not generally a big fan of providing cash to people who have a proven track record of mis-managing their own money.  I don't know the details of the success or otherwise of this piece of "Howard Genius" thus far, so it's hard for me to comment either way.  My gut feel is that there might be better ways than forking over cash.