Monday, July 2, 2007

NSW, I'm very dissapointed in you...

New smoking restrictions came in this week. I foolishly assumed that NSW had finally caught up with QLD where you're not allowed to smoke anywhere that food is served, indoors or out, and even to have a smoking area in a beer garden requires special and well controlled permits.

The new rules for NSW though just make all inside areas of pubs and clubs smoke-free, which while better than nothing is far from perfect. It pretty much means that if you want some fresh air, you have to stay inside. Which sucks, because in nice weather being outside in a beer garden, or al fresco dining is just loevly.

Local councils are allowed to make their own rules fortunately, and some like Manly and Mosman have said that al fresco dining on council land must be smoke free. Hopefully other councils will follow along. Imagine if Sydney City Council did? That'd be brilliant.

Ideally they'd say no smoking on the street in the city as well. Though I have noticed fewer people just smoking on the streets. Used to be you'd be walking around in constant smokey slipstreams, but now they are infrequent enough that you can dodge and weave around them. So, maybe these restrictions are already encouraging peopel to give up, reducing the number of people inspired to start and basically affecting how smokers feel about inflicting their smoke on other people.

It might be time to start work on making Lush keep their hayfever-inducing soap smells inside.

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