As a bystander I just observed a Spalding shopworker – hardly the most richly remunerated of local employees – being abused after legitimately asking a purchaser of smoking-related products to show proof of age.
How selfish some people are. Are such tobacco users unaware that local authorities may send mystery purchasers to outlets selling these products?
Failure to request proof of age could thus lead to a retailer losing a licence and going out of business, negatively impacting local consumers seeking to make more innocent transactions.
Local authorities’ enforcement procedures are entirely justified. I have lost two close relatives to smoking-related cancer, including my mother, who never smoked a cigarette in her life, but unavoidably passively inhaled her abusive husband’s smoke.
How can users of these products justify any change which would make pursuit of their self-indulgent and filthy habit even easier?
If you object so much to having your ID checked in these circumstances, there is a well-supported, more mature and much wiser alternative available to abuse and threats. It is called “giving up smoking”.
G Kent
Spalding
