JUVENILE SMOKING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9065, 14 April 1908, Page 4

JUVENILE SMOKING.

There is a Bill at present before the British Parliament introduced by the Under-Secretary to the Home Office, for the further protection of children, and one of the features of the measure relates to the suppression of juvenile smoking. This portion of the Bill follows somewhat upon the lines of the New Zealand law, but, unlike our law, it provides for the imposition of a penalty upon juvenile smokers. When our Bill for the suppression of juvenile smuk'ng was passed it was rendered nugatory so far as youngsters are concerned by the eli- ) mination by the Council of the penal clause, so that children may be seen smoking cigarettes in the open to-day as freely as they did before the Act was passed. Suppliers of tobacco or cigarettes to juveniles are liable to a penalty, but it is almost impossible to detect breaches of the law. The British Bill makes the youthful offender liable for a first offence to no greater penalty than a reprimand, but for subsequent offences light fine's are to be imposed. What the mover of the Bill thinks will be a more effective check is the provision enabling the police to coniiscate the tobacco which is being used by these little boys It is evident that the Home Office Under-Secretary is either not the father of small boys, or is singularly unsophisticated, if he imagines that confiscation will be an effectual bar to juvenile smoking. So long as cigar and cigarette ends ar3 to be picked up in the channels and on footpaths the ragged urchins will not go short of a "whiff," while the better class of juveniles will find ample means of renewing their stock of "fine cut." Both will smoke in secret. To suppress juvenile smoking will be found a knottier problem than to suppress adult drinking, the attempt to do which this session bids fair to wreck the Government.