Tasmania drafts strict anti-smoking law

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Tasmania can lay claim to the world's purest air, based on data gathered by a pollution monitoring station. One fact of which the island is less proud is its smoking rate, the second-highest in Australia after the Northern Territory.

The state already has some of the country's strictest anti-smoking laws, with Launceston voting this month to follow Hobart's example and ban cigarettes from its central commercial district.

But now one local authority has come up with an even more draconian proposal: prohibit tobacco across the island.

The idea was put forward by Burnie City Council after the state government - which is planning further limits on where smokers can light up - asked for submissions. Burnie's vision is for the sale, possession and consumption of cigarettes to be illegal Tasmania-wide.

Even back gardens, the last refuge of dedicated puffers, would be smoke-free.

The suggestion has prompted outrage from civil libertarians. Even anti-smoking groups call it unworkable. But to besieged smokers, it does not seem that far-fetched. Other Tasmanian cities and towns are considering bans, and there are calls for smokers to be banished from the beaches.

One in four Tasmanians smokes, compared with a national rate of 17 per cent. But Michael Wilson, executive director of Quit Tasmania, said price increases and health campaigns were more effective than legislation. Describing Burnie's proposal as "a futuristic sort of approach", he said: "It would be fraught with danger, the idea of a whole population going cold turkey."

In Launceston, smoking is now prohibited in pedestrian malls, bus stations and outdoor eating areas. But Ivan Dean, a city councillor and driving force behind the crackdown, is lukewarm about a Tasmania-wide ban.

"You'd be introducing a regime like America in the 1930s," he said. "Prohibition creates bootlegging and a black market. There would be mayhem."

Tim Vines, a director of Civil Liberties Australia, said that although there were valid public health reasons for limited smoking bans, "it's paternalistic to exile people engaging in an otherwise legal activity from public life and exile them to their backyards".

One Burnie official said: "We just wanted to take that extra step, to show how passionate we are about creating a healthy environment."