Given the many and well documented difficulties the ACT Government has experienced over the years in delivering acceptable hospital services, it would be fair to assume our Health and Wellbeing Minister, Meegan Fitzharris, would have better things to do than take aim at our dwindling band of nicotine addicts.
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Canberra's cynics could be excused for thinking recent rumblings about even more Draconian restrictions on where smokers are allowed to indulge their vice are an act of misdirection; a smokescreen if you will.
As long as Fitzharris is talking up the evils of what the last time we checked, was still a legal drug, she is not talking about the inquiry into the many woes that have beset ACT Health, its questionable culture and repeated failures to achieve performance targets regularly ticked off on without controversy in other jurisdictions.
Then, of course, there is the as yet unresolved debacle that was last month's attempt to recruit a new hospital boss.
No, at times like these it is easier to invoke the nanny state and Canberra's long-standing reputation as a "progressive" social laboratory in which brave new worlds are regularly conjured into being than to face reality, accept the responsibilities of office and fix real problems.
That said, it would be foolhardy to downplay the health risks and cost to the community associated with smoking. It remains one of the largest causes of preventable illness and death in Canberra, across the nation and around the globe.
The trouble is the Territory government's policies on drugs seem to be all over the place.
It is apparently easier to access some hard drugs than cigarettes in the Alexander Maconochie Centre; we have recently run the first pill testing trial in Australian history at a local music festival and, only a couple of weeks ago, senior government figures, including Chief Minister Andrew Barr, indicated they would be "favourably disposed" to the legalisation of the personal possession of cannabis.
This sits oddly with suggestions the legal age for smoking be raised to 21 even though an 18-year-old is considered to be old enough to vote or to be sent overseas to fight for their country.
Are we headed towards a future in which a 19-year-old Canberran heading out for a night on the town could be busted for nicotine but waved on for cannabis possession? Strange days indeed as Jim Morrison, a well-known expert on this particular subject, would have said.
Smoking is a legal activity and smokers have rights which need to be balanced against those of the broader community.
Given the ACT already has the lowest smoking rate in the country we have to ask what would be achieved by going even further and, as has been suggested, banning smoking in most or all of Canberra's public spaces?
It is already illegal to smoke in children's play areas, public transport waiting areas and service and food consumption areas in pubs, clubs and restaurants.
If the ACT Government is truly committed to reducing smoking rates even further it would be better advised to follow the advice of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Association ACT, and invest in treatment and harm reduction programs that target high risk groups.