By Sue Newman  October 31 2009

Life is about to get a whole lot tougher for smokers who use parks and sports fields in the Ashburton District.

The Ashburton District Council plans to join the growing number of districts around New Zealand where a smoking ban is imposed in most, if not all of its outdoor spaces.

 At the top of the list are Ashburton Domain, Argyle Park, Robilliard Park and Digby Place.

 At the prompting of children from Hampstead School, the council wrote a smokefree policy for playgrounds in 2007.

 Initially this applied only to Friedlander Park, but its success saw council extend the smoking ban to all playgrounds.

 Ashburton is one of 22 councils around New Zealand to have applied a smokefree policy of some kind to its playgrounds.

 When the council prepared its community plan this year, Smoke Free Mid Canterbury and the Canterbury District Health Board both made a pitch to have the smoke free policy extended to include all council owned parks, sports fields and the proposed aquatic centre and indoor stadium.

 Council community planning manager Gavin Thomas suggested a blanket smoking ban would be expensive to implement and police, particularly in remote areas and in recreational areas that were not well used.

 “The expense of putting signage here would not be very productive as would ensuring consistency of management. Council doesn’t provide day to day management of some of these spaces, particularly rural domains,” he said.

 Council’s energy and finance would be better concentrated on parks that were well used by children, Mr Thomas said.

 The council plans to develop an educative based smokefree playground and sports free policy that be phased in across the domain and the three urban parks.

 The number of regular smokers in the Ashburton District, as shown in the 2006 census, represents 21% of the population, the same as in 1996.

 Nationally regular smoker numbers dropped from 23% of the population in 1996 to 21% in 2006.

 Ex smoker numbers in Ashburton remained static on 22%, while nationally numbers dropped from 22% to 20%.