NorthTec would earn kudos for a full smoking ban, rather than derision. Photo / Michael Cunningham
The modern day attitude towards smoking tends to be zero tolerance in the workplace.
The Northern Publishing building is 99 per cent smoke free, bar an outdoor area near a lunchroom.
There aren't always queues of non-smokers waiting to get outside to share some fresh air with our smokers.
But we seem to to co-exist happily enough.
NorthTec isn't 100 per cent smoke free either, and accommodates smokers in "huts" around the campus.
A 100 per cent ban would result in smokers having to hit the streets for a fag - not a good look. Although a smokers' hut near the campus for our future health professionals isn't either. Perhaps a compromise is the solution. Less huts?
Just like giving up smoking, the first step in implementing a smoking ban is the hardest - you have to want to.
Once you take it though, there are multiple benefits, and NorthTec would earn kudos for a full smoking ban, rather than derision.
A large red anti-smoking ball rolled into town this week and on to the NorthTec campus, where the irony of NorthTec's smoking stance smouldered away.
Part of the ball's presence was to promote Stoptober - a national campaign encouraging people to formulate a plan to stop smoking as from October 1. (October, Stoptober ... get it?)
I think it is a fine idea.
It took me two attempts to give up smoking. I have no willpower, so used nicotine patches. It was easy - so easy I started smoking a few years later thinking I could control my part-time smoking.
I couldn't. Second time around, having learned my lesson, I knew I had to take the all or nothing approach.
It's not easy but it can be done and the extra money and years of life you give yourself and your family make it worth it.
And I couldn't agree more with Stoptober's advice - you need a plan. Don't stop smoking and take up eating, for example.
Otherwise after Stoptober you'll need to put yourself through a Dietember programme.
The contentious bill will have its first reading in Parliament this afternoon.