And at least one former prisoner has warned authorities they would face a ''revolt'' if prisoners were not allowed to smoke at Alexander Moconochie Centre.

On Friday Chief Minister Katy Gallagher launched a list of proposals to ban smoking at public swimming pools, playgrounds, sporting fields, bus interchanges, the entrances to buildings and inside correctional facilities.

ACT Health will also consider other anti-smoking measures and will consult with community groups before deciding whether the bans should be put in place.

A former inmate of AMC, who wished to remain anonymous, said a cigarette ban at the facility would not be tolerated by inmates or guards.

''I think people would become extremely aggressive … I don't think it'd go down well at all,'' he said.

Cigarettes are used as a form of currency in the jail and inmates regularly smoke in cells and outside while guards turn a blind eye, according to the former inmate.

He said banning cigarettes would create a black market that would concentrate power in a small number of prisoners. ''It actually makes cigarettes even more valuable. They'd still get them in, and then it'd make it heaps more valuable,'' he said.

''Then if you're able to get cigarettes, you've got complete control over a lot of them.''

Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson, who is against a needle exchange program in the prison, also opposed the ban.

"What Katy Gallagher is saying is that she is accepting heroin use but prisoners can't consume a legal product that is tobacco," he said.

ACT Chief Health Officer Paul Kelly said a term of imprisonment could be a chance for inmates to work on their tobacco dependence, but acknowledged the contradiction between the proposal and the government's needle exchange policy.

"It's a very good point that there's a banned substance that we're taking a harm minimisation stance [on], and a non-banned substance that we're banning. There's an internal issue there," he said.

But Mr Kelly said there were very high smoking rates at the prison, which could pose an occupational health and safety risk for staff and threaten the health of inmates.

"Injected drugs are a health risk for the person that's injecting. People who chose to smoke is a health risk

for them but also others who share that space," he said.

Ms Gallagher said the Office of Regulatory Services would be required to enforce any changes to smoking legislation at other proposed locations and it may need additional resources as its workload increases.

"But we're not going to have an army of smoking police going around fining people," she said. "You get much better compliance when you have signs up and people changing their behaviour because the message is you're not to smoke near a playground. If you smoke near a playground with a big sign up you become a bit of a social pariah."

Mr Hanson gave his in-principle support to several of the smoking ban proposals, including at playgrounds.

The government would also consider increasing tobacco licensing fees for business owners.