Australian smokers should have to carry a ''smartcard licence'' to purchase cigarettes so health authorities can track their behaviour and better target quit messages to them, health and legal academics say.

In an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia, University of Sydney Law School's Professor Roger Magnusson and chief executive of the Cancer Institute NSW Professor David Currow said a licence scheme could also make it harder for children and adolescents to buy cigarettes.

Building on a similar licensing proposal from anti-smoking crusader Professor Simon Chapman last year, the pair said adult smokers could be forced to purchase a licence to buy cigarettes, with age and identity-verifying information on a smartcard, if they wanted to smoke. Retailers would then be required to reconcile all stock purchased from wholesalers against a digital record of retail sales to licensed smokers. This would help to create a database of smokers and their cigarette purchases, while also creating an incentive for retailers to comply with laws that prohibit tobacco sales to children.

While Professor Chapman last year proposed a scheme where smokers sit a pre-licence test on the risks of smoking and limits on how many cigarettes they buy, professors Currow and Magnusson said a simpler system was required. They said smartcards without these features would still enable health authorities to detect ''patterns and variations in smokers' behaviour and to develop more sophisticated, individualised communications to assist smokers to quit. It will enable rigorous evaluation of smoking cessation programs, ensuring that public health dollars are focused on evidence-based strategies that yield the best returns.''

While critics say the scheme could exacerbate stigma through the creation of ''registered addicts'', the professors said the benefits of a scheme outweighed this concern.