Closing the Gap !

Cigarette smoking is fast becoming the ultimate anti social activity that can be legally performed in a public place.  The ash trays have long been removed from restaurants, supermarkets and even the bars of pubs and people smoking in the street draw distasteful looks from other pedestrians.  It is now a criminal offence to light up in the privacy of your own car - if you have children present in that vehicle.

But there is a hard core of smokers that persist despite ever hardening regulations and the price hikes that have measured each individual cigarette in dollars when it used to be mere cents.  We are accustomed to see the huddle outside office buildings where the smokers gather for a quick puff and which are identified by cigarette butts discarded in the gutter.

North Sydney Council unanimously passed a new regulation that for the first time in Australia would create an entire city CBD as a smoke free zone.   Councillors see this as progressive because in 2016 both Brett Whitely Place and Elizabeth Plaza were gazetted smoke free.   The council has extended that ban to the entire CBD.

This is probably an inevitability.  First smoking was banned where food was being served and then it moved to the bars of pubs - with strident opposition.   The right to smoke in any enclosed public building is long gone and recently nicotine abstinence was enforced on our prison population.  The no smoking net is ever closing.

This edict by North Sydney council is a brave move and it will be watched with interest by other councils.  It will affect a great many people.   There are about 72,000 residents living in North Sydney and another 46,000 commute daily to office jobs there.  This ordinance requires them to completely refrain from lighting a smoke for the entire period they remain within the North Sydney council boundary.

North Sydney is Sydney's second largest CBD and erecting signs and making this ordinance known will not be completed before Christmas.   The new regulations will come into force by the new year and at this stage they will be enacted on a " goodwill basis ".   Rangers will not be patrolling the CBD and handing out fines, but smokers will be stopped and counselled.

This is in line with all previous anti smoking measures.  Compliance was negotiated gently and for a time smokers were simply directed to butt that smoke without having a penalty imposed.   That period of grace expired when the majority became accustomed to the law and now any sort of infringement in a pub or café has become rare.

A long time ago nearly half the population of Australia smoked some form of tobacco.   Today, those still using nicotine in New South Wales has dropped to just 15.2 % of the population, and in North Sydney the level is just 9.5%.    It is evident that this CBD ban will see that figure drop even further.