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Payouts for quitting are a bad idea

Albert E. Cram

Feb. 2, 2015 12:01 am

To the editor:

I see that a new study has shown that paying smokers $600 not to smoke produces better results than sending them to smoking cessation services, although the article in The Gazette does not define the percent who actually quit and stayed non-smoking.

I suppose now that research team could expand to paying alcoholics $800 not to drink alcohol and cocaine and meth addicts $1,000 to stop using those drugs. The government could assume the payments when the research funds dry up, probably in about 3 or 4 days, and the DEA could declare the war on drugs is over. Let me see, now where is it the government gets the money for all the things they pay for?

Albert E. Cram, MD

Iowa City

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