I know exactly what it takes and precisely how it feels like to be an imbecile. I spent the best part of 30 years acting like a full-blown Neanderthal-drongo-moron all day, every day. Between 1981 and 2011 I spent well over $100,000 ensuring I was a card-carrying halfwit.

That is to say I was a pack-a-day smoker.

Although I embraced stupidity at a young age by sparking up my first dart at 13 (completely of my own volition), I didn't magically become an idiot overnight. No, it took about six months of steadfastly inhaling foul-tasting, throat-scorching, puke response-inducing toxic smoke before I finally vanquished common sense and hard-wired self-preservation instincts to cement a habit and take my place among the smelly, boneheaded galoots of the world.

I can't even claim naivety; back when I started there was the same irrefutable evidence about health implications as there is today. But I ignored it; I just desperately wanted to be cool. I wanted people to consider me a young man on the edge. A punk. A rebel. Dangerous.

There's nothing more dangerous than lung cancer, my science teacher Mr Champion used to say. If "The Champ" busted you sneaking a durry at recess, rather than go the official route he'd make you smoke three ciggies back-to-back with a puff every 15 seconds and no break.

A crowd of kids would gather to watch The Champ's "physical education" sessions because it was guaranteed every single teenage tough guy would tremble uncontrollably after about one-and-three-quarter durries, turn greyish-green and throw up on their desert boots. I certainly did, and it caused a lot of kids to quit on the spot.

Not me though - the next day I'd be back on the lung busters. For decades henceforth I'd smoke myself silly, toting smart-looking, gold embossed packets with branding that promised an "extra-mild" or "special" experience upon inhaling the poisonous gasses. Another slogan of a preferred brand of coffin nails purported to be my "international passport to smoking pleasure" (a tautology from an equally dumb company, I reckon, since there's no such thing as a domestic passport).

When I entered the workforce in late 1986, it seemed like everyone smoked. In the Sydney newspaper office where I got my start, ashtrays and coffee cups overflowed with the soot and butts of one trillion durries and the blue-gray smoke hung in the air of the newsroom from 4.30am until the last people left at 3pm.

Back then you could smoke in the rounds cars, you could smoke in the pub, you could smoke in dining rooms, you could smoke in Parliament, you could smoke putting your kids into bed, you could smoke in taxis and in doctors' waiting rooms and you sure as hell could smoke on every street corner in the country.

By the mid 1990s, though, the smart people in society had had enough; smoking was not only stupid and stinky, they pointed out, it had an evil aspect too - maiming and killing sensible non-smokers via passive smoking. Companies backed by court rulings banned smoking in the workplace and governments of all stripe started excising tracts of public space from the putrid filth of smokerly refuse. Ciggie Butt Brains were consigned to the sidewalks outside of office buildings and, eventually, they weren't welcome there either.

It was around the time of the outside office bans - about four years ago - that I finally quit smoking. No matter how stupid I'd been in intentionally gassing myself all those years, I always prided myself on the fact I could read. No Smoking! Smoking Prohibited! Smoke-free Zone! These are words I understood and I respected other peoples' right not to develop cancer or have their lunch befouled because of me.

Which brings me to Crown Street Mall.

In November 2013, Wollongong City Council banned smoking in the mall between Keira and Kembla streets and in Globe Lane, Globe Way and Church Street from Globe Lane to Court Lane. You're also barred from sparking up a duz at licensed outdoor dining and council-owned alfresco areas in the mall.

Got it? No? Well, you must be two planks thicker than the average idiot smoker. Although the number of durry munchers in the mall has fallen since the ban was introduced, about 500 people a month are still lighting up.

To its credit, Wollongong City Council has opted for an "education-based" approach, using stickers and promotional postcards, signs on tree guards and social media messages instead of handing out $110 fines to enforce the ban. In fact not a single fine has been issued since the smoking ban began.

Well, it's been well over a year now and thousands of people have either been too dumb or too selfish to stop smoking in the mall. I say it's time to hit them with the fines, but make it $500. If that doesn't work then let's try another education based strategy; rangers should be given the power to make offenders smoke three gaspers back to back with a puff every 15 seconds and no break. Not only would you get those smoker numbers down in a jiffy, you'd generate some entertaining street theatre to boot.