Something I’ve noticed, having been on a lot of trips with a tramping club in a short space of time, is that the people who go on such trips are almost never smokers. The only time I actually remember being on a trip with someone who smoked was the trip to Rangiwahia. The club rated it an Easy trip, and on that occasion we reached the night’s destination within two hours. The smokers stayed behind in the sun at the hut while the rest of us went further up the hill into the snow after lunch, for an afternoon walk.
Walking around town is quite the opposite. There are people smoking everywhere. Perhaps it’s just more obvious since the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Act was passed in 2003, making it a legal requirement that all workplaces be smoke-free as of December 2004. Naturally this has driven people who like to smoke out into the streets. It probably also means that people’s smoking tends to be more concentrated during the times when they’ll be outside for other reasons, such as during their lunch breaks, and before and after work. These tend to co-incide with the times that everyone else is outside, and as someone who walks around streets a lot, I’ve found the apparently lessened quality of the outdoor air to be off-putting.
