TAMWORTH Regional Council is heating up its campaign against smokes on the main drag with work under way to beef-up signage in CBD.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It has been one year since council enforced its smoking ban in the CBD and while it’s yet to write a single fine for non-compliance, feedback received has called for more-visible signage.
“It’s just to hammer home the point,” TRC manager of regulatory services Ross Briggs said.
“The feedback we’ve had so far is our signage in the area isn’t as visual as we’d like it to be, so we’re going to improve that.”
WORLD NO TOBACCO DAY
This would include extra signage as well as screen-printing on the footpaths.
Mr Briggs hoped the project would get off the ground in the next financial year and guessed it would cost no more than $5000.
Mr Briggs, who has been council’s face through the roll-out of the CBD smoking ban, said there has been a good sense of cooperation and compliance over the past 12 months, with non-council staff playing a key role in policing the non-smoking edict.
“Those that rangers have had to talk to have not realised they’re in a smoke-free area or have quickly put their cigarette out or moved to a smoking area,” he said.
“Generally, the population have been quite receptive to it and we’ve had a lot of people come to us and say that they’ve approached and explained to them they need to put their cigarette out and it seems to be working.
The council manager said there hadn’t been much resistance to the smoking-ban, which he put down to a sign of the times.
“I think most of the smokers have accepted that change is coming everywhere in terms of people being accepting of smoking in public,” he said.
“The feedback we’ve had is to do with the signage.”
He also hinted at public smoking bans in the council-area’s other towns and villages would be revisted.
“We said we would be reviewing the smoke-free policy and when we do that we will open it up to the other villages and see if they want to come back on board and be part of the program,” he said.
“We have had some interest from the other villages, but we will have to go around again and gauge the interest in the communities to make sure everyone is on board.
“We don’t want to be throwing them in kicking and screaming.”
RELATED STORIES:
Cancer Council cracks down on ciggie supplies
Smoking rates in the region are down as low 15 per cent in the region thanks to various campaigns and policies regarding lighting-up in public places.
The next frontier in the war on durries is targeting the over-supply in NSW, with the Cancer Council putting pressure on for tighter regulations on the sale of tobacco.
New England North West Cancer Council spokeswoman Dimity Betts said about 15 per cent of adults in the region were still smokers, but these figures blew-out in “disadvantaged” groups such as the “homeless and people in prison, drug-users and Aboriginal people”.
May 31 marked World No Tobacco Day and while Mrs Betts said the last 10 years had been a turning point of sorts for reducing the demand for smokes, there was still a long way to go.
“Across NSW, there’s still 10,000 outlets that still sell cigarettes,” she said.
“This is greater than the number of post offices and places that sell milk and bread.
“The fact that anyone can still sell cigarettes is a really big problem and it is something that is now needing to be addressed.
“Supply needs to be tightened so that not everyone can sell cigarettes.
“We’ve got really tight regulations when it comes to alcohol sales, so now it’s about enforcing those for cigarettes as well.”