On Monday, July 22 North Sydney Council voted unanimously to ban smoking in all public areas in the business district but smokers will not receive fines until council reviews the policy in March.

Deputy Mayor Cr Patricia White saw a ban on smoking in the Nowra CBD as a natural roll-on effect of the way society is trending.

"It's something that hasn't been raised at council but as things change over years no doubt it will come up," she said.

"I just think it's a progression of the way we're going and maybe council needs to look at doing a survey to see what residents think."

Cr Nina Digiglio was passionate about a ban being implemented.

"I brought this to council a couple of years ago," she said.

"I would love to ban smoking in the CBD for two reasons.

"People leave their butts all over the floor but also the health impacts.

"$100 million was spent on smoking-related illnesses in our hospitals - that's a lot of money that could go into prevention rather than a cure."

Cr Andrew Guile said a smoking ban would disadvantage too many residents.

"It might be well for the establishment in North Sydney to look down their noses of people who had the unfortunate habit of smoking but we have the responsibility and privilege of serving those people as well as the rest of the community," he said.

On the suggestion we should survey residents, Cr Guile was critical.

"We don't need a survey to tell our people what we need," he said.

"Councillors need to know how to make decisions on everything not poll everything, it's weakness."

Cr Joanna Gash had not thought much about the issue.

"Nobody has really brought it to our attention," she said.

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"I think there are plenty of places you can't smoke and I think there are people that do smoke and I'd like to be able to cater for them as well and try and convince them not to."

Emeritus Professor Simon Chapman from the University of Sydney, who has written extensively on tobacco control, was concerned about CBD-wide smoking bans.

"Evidence that's been gathered about breathing other people's smoke have been almost exclusively from people who live with smokers or people who work in an occupation where there's a lot of exposure," he said.

"I did a review about exposure in outdoor settings, there's hardly anything, it doesn't really make much sense to even assess it."

When asked about banning smoking for other reasons, such as the smell or to incentivise smokers to quit, he said it was for communities to decide but it was not a public health risk.

"Generally in public health ethics the only time you do paternalistic things is when it comes to children or people who are mentally incompetent," he said.

"Seat belts and bicycle helmets are also paternalistic but they are a trivial interference in freedom so it's a different category of imposition."