Overview
With free trams, great coffee, even better bearded men and now a potential smoking ban, Melbourne's really upping the stakes in its claim to become Australia's most progressive city. Melbourne City Council have today announced plans to make the CBD completely smoke-free by 2016. This would make Melbourne the first city in the world to implement such comprehensive measures. Of course, it would also make us home to the most disgruntled business types — sitting forlornly on a milk crate on Degraves just won't look the same if you don't have a durry in hand.
This news comes after a successful bid to make The Causeway — one of the cheeky laneways between Bourke and Little Collins — smoke-free, alongside six similar bans."I think there's overwhelming support to progress smoke-free areas given the great success we had with The Causeway," city councillor Richard Foster told Fairfax Radio this morning. "I think we're going to actually attract people to Melbourne by being one of the first in the world to go smoke-free."
Though Cr Foster maintains he has majority support on the idea, not all politicians are on board. Premier Denis Napthine strongly opposes the proposition, deeming it "totally unworkable" and "totally unreasonable". Similar disdain can also be heard from the city's street traders. After all, smokers still flock to outdoor seating in our city's cafes for the iconic coffee and cigarette combo.
In its current imagining the plan would ban smoking for both pedestrians and footpath diners in the areas between Flinders Street, Spencer Street, Spring Street and Queen Victoria Market; though there would be designated smoking areas most likely in the form of shelters. Smokers seen breaking the ban would be met with on-the-spot fines, though the prohibition would be understandably difficult to police.
The plan is similar to that which has recently been implemented in our inner-city universities. Both RMIT and the University of Melbourne are currently smoke-free and offer rather meagre designated areas for insistent smokers. The issue was debated widely by students as both a move towards a safer and healthier environment and an infringement on smokers' civil liberties. Of course, should the issue be taken city-wide the debate would only intensify.
So far, public reaction on social media has been fairly positive. Even Lord Mayor Robert Doyle is on board so long as the changes are "incremental". If there's ever been a time to quit, this is probably it. Life as a smoker is getting more and more outlawed by the day.
Via The Australian. Photo credit: Orin Zebest.