Over the past several months, a radio spot has been running pretty frequently about a website, My5K.ca, where you could sign up to get $5000 just for graduating from high school smoke-free. Between the cynic and the skeptic in me, a great battle raged, between whether a) this was possible to judge fairly, and b) whether this was even a good idea, trying to incentivize the mere act of being a non-smoker. Only recently did I start digging around to find out what this whole program is about.
It seems this program is Canada wide, as the registered charity that’s administering it, the R.E.W.A.R.D.S Foundation (acronym: Rewarding Everyone Who Acts Responsibly and Doesn’t Smoke, I kid you not), operates out of British Columbia. The radio spot had left me with the impression that this was a government run initiative, and frankly, to offer a straight $5000 to anyone graduating smoke-free would be ludicrous on its face, especially if it was done Canada-wide, so I assumed it was local. It seems the ad left me with several false impressions, not the least of which being that all you had to do was graduate smoke-free.
The program works like this. First, you sign up, and you are administered a CO breathalyzer test to determine whether you’re a smoker or not. I assume either a representative makes the rounds to all the high schools that have participants in order to deliver this test, or the breathalyzer is passed from school to school and each school is expected not to falsify their results — keep in mind this fact, as keeping everyone honest is bound to create some overhead for the program.
The breath test itself would appear to be far from foolproof, despite the FAQ’s claims that the breathalyzer “is sensitive enough to distinguish between first and secondhand smoke” — this paper written for administering such tests to pregnant women, states that it all depends on what the CO cutoff level is. A cutoff of 8ppm correctly identifies 99% of self-identified non-smokers, but only 60% of self-identified smokers, whereas a cutoff of 2ppm identifies 86% of smokers and 90% of non-smokers correctly. That means that either 40% of smokers will game this system successfully, or some ten percent of non-smokers are going to be misidentified as smokers and stuck in an administrative nightmare where the foundation withholds their funds due to either false readings, or due to some outside factor blackening their lungs. As I was growing up, we would take frequent trips in the car, including a yearly 7-hour car trip to Nova Scotia to visit my grandmother, and (especially during the winter months) both my parents would smoke with the windows rolled up, my sister and I in the back seat complaining about the smell and the inability to breathe the whole way. Over time, they started taking that into consideration, cracking the windows even during the wintertime, but where they were both heavy smokers I’m sure my lungs came out looking like tar when I was done with grade school and moved out for university. I’m almost certain I personally would have failed the 2ppm cutoff and would have been caught in that 10% nightmare.
In signing up for the program, you agree to take that breathalyzer test about once a year, which makes me wonder how they’ll ensure every participant actually does get tested regularly, and what the CO falloff in your system might be, e.g. whether or not a student could go out and smoke several packs a day for, say, the six months immediately after taking their last test.
You also agree — and here’s the clincher — to go out and get several sponsors to donate a set amount (minimum $25) a month, for durations of 30 or 60 months depending on what grade you start collecting donors; 50% of which is tax-deductable as charity contributions. The foundation keeps 17% of what’s pledged to cover all their overhead, and the student gets the remainder. They include a helpful chart on their site:
Total Combined Monthly Donations
Months
Total Donated
Admin*
Grant*
Tax Credit
Net Cost to Sponsors
$25
60
$1500
($250)
$1250
($450-$750)
$750-$1050
$100
60
$6000
($1000)
$5000
($1800-$3000)
$3000-$4200
$200
30
$6000
($1000)
$5000
($1800-$3000)
$3000-$4200
$1000
60
$60,000
($10,000)
$50,000
(18,000-$30,000
$30,000-$42,000
Well. Judging by that chart, this is already looking like a hard sell.
Tax time has just come and gone, the economy is on life support, and these poor students are expected to go out and find multiple donors to commit to 30 or 60 months of donations to their university fund, getting only half of their donations back each April, all in the face of the fact that the students and the donors could theoretically get very nearly same amount of benefit by asking the donors to contribute the 50% they wouldn’t get back under this scheme to their university funds directly, all without quitting smoking. Aside from the fact that it’s looking like a pipe dream to get anyone to put up that much coin right now, there’s so much overhead to the project that they have to take 17% of the donations, meaning of the 50% the government is doling out, 34% of that goes to the foundation rather than the student.
I’m all for students quitting smoking, considering how much of a financial burden they’re taking on and don’t even realize it (most of them haven’t even stopped getting an allowance yet for crap’s sake!), but I can’t help but look at those numbers, and the science behind the breathalyzer test, and feel as though this whole project is one massive, albeit well-intentioned, boondoggle. Actually, that small, repressed cynical part of me is screaming “scam”, though I see absolutely no evidence of such — much more likely that this is honestly the best this program can be run, that it’s honestly that inefficient. And in light of the recent post at Almost Diamonds about the negative contrast effect in using monetary incentives to encourage behaviour that has inherent incentives, I’m not even sure the program will get many participants, given that those that already don’t smoke could go out and get sponsors directly should they choose.
I think the part that bothers me the most about this is that the radio spot made it seem a lot less effort — like, just be a non-smoker, and we’ll throw money at you in bags with dollar signs on the side. That’s far from the reality, and you students would do well to realize this.
Well, that does help explain why news of it had never made it down here. It sounds as though honest advertising would say something more like, “Want to pay your kids and grandkids not to smoke and know that you’re getting what you pay for? Call us for enforcement.” Did you find out what happens to the money if they kid smokes?
In fact, I didn’t. It mentions that if they fail a test, there’s a procedure to get back in good standing with them, but there’s absolutely zero mention of what should happen to that money if you never return to their good graces. I should inquire, perhaps. And maybe ask them what cutoff point they’re using for the test.
This does appear rather poorly conceived, even IF potential donors weren’t likely to be rediscovering their inner tightwads in times like these. This was somebody’s baby, and kudos to them for realizing it in spite of all the very good reasons not to.
Effing great post, though.
Why thank you! You’re no slouch yourself, Asshole. 🙂