IN the spirit of political horse trading, for which Tasmanians are so renowned, if the Liberal state government bans Yoof from smoking tobacco, could it not, at the same time, legalise the dreaded weed?
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Um, the ingestion of cannabis that is, and strictly for medicinal purposes, of course.
Independent MLC Ivan Dean hopes to ban any person born after 2000 from buying cigarettes, meaning that around 2087 some heavy-breathing old dude, shrunken of lung and yellow of finger, will surely stagger into a Tasmanian supermarket on a mission.
This aged person, born in December 1999, will hitch up his wilting britches and adjust his battered pork pie hat before yelling at a check out chick: "Hey, give us a packet of smokes, it's my right."
Naturally, the staff member will politely ask the wheezing geezer for his birth certificate.
After perusing the tattered documentation, a packet of cigarettes will be slid across the counter.
And that will be the last packet of fags sold in the state.
The steel shutters will slam down for the last time, the remaining tobacco destroyed.
Mr Dean first mooted his semi-brilliant scheme in 2012.
"It wouldn't be prohibition because you would be dealing with a group that had not smoked so you wouldn't be taking something away from them," Mr Dean said, perhaps with a naïve belief in Yoof's lack of deviousness.
Given that the legislation, hanging off a private members' bill (and therefore with little chance of success), would not kick in until 2018, it's only a pipedream.
Yet if this bizarre, and blatantly ageist, law did get up, does it not make the gentle reader wonder whether it could be the springboard and inspiration for other cutting-edge rules on how the nanny state may best order our lives?
Perhaps the suggested fag ban could be extended to the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
And maybe, and seeing as how the state government has ditched the requirement for elderly drivers to be tested annually to see if they are fit to get behind the wheel, we could make it unlawful for anyone born from 2000 onwards to drive a motor vehicle.
What a boon for the environment (the Greens are going to love this one) as cars are gradually withdrawn and eventually only motorists aged over 90 allowed to rocket around the streets in their ancient vehicles.
Careful crossing the road, out there!
Truly, and as Australia leads the world in telling the other fellow how to live, how about a ban on artery-clogging hamburgers for anyone born after 2014?
After all, hand-wringing PC types and assorted health Nazis have already joined battle on a so-called "fat tax", that penalty on the porcine, a bid to ban the big-bottomed.
Should anti-lard ass laws be enacted, and one waddles down the street with a burger in one hand and fries in the other, expect to be confronted by a caliper-wielding cop demanding you submit to a pinch test.
Fail and it's jail.
Meanwhile, it would be difficult to know how the "last cigarette sale" supermarket scenario will play out on that fateful day in 2087 even if this columnist reckons it would be good if a live band played the old geezer out of the gaudy hall of commerce with a stirring version of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes or, at the least, Otis Redding's Cigarettes And Coffee.
Assuming caffeine is still a drug of choice.
Mind you, if the state's marijuana laws have changed by century's end, in that legendary bid to push cannabis use from the criminal justice system to the health arena, other smoking songs played could well be Neil Young's Roll Another One or Cab Calloway's Reefer Man.
Hey, got a lighter?
