THE ACT government should restrict smoking in public places even further, the ACT chief health officer, Paul Kelly, says.
Dr Kelly said that while the ACT had the lowest rate of smoking in the country, more needed to be done to encourage people to snuff the habit for good.
Eleven per cent of Canberrans smoke, compared with 15.1 per cent nationally.
But Dr Kelly said this was no reason to stop encouraging people to quit, or not take up the habit in the first place, especially since the community's view about the habit had changed so much.
''It's not normal anymore, you have to make a very conscious decision to move away from the social situation … to go outside and have a smoke,'' he said.
He said while the government had no plans to implement more smoking bans in public areas, the community's wish for this had been taken on board.
''I think we haven't gone as far as we should in that area,'' Dr Kelly said.
The draft National Tobacco Strategy, issued in June, outlines how governments can reduce national smoking rates to 10 per cent and halve the rate of smoking by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by 2018.
According to the report, the ACT has almost halved the amount of people smoking since 2001.
