On the one hand, it has to be a good thing that decades of often gruesome public education have seen smoking rates fall dramatically across the country.

Many of us are old enough to remember a time when it seemed everyone smoked - anywhere and any time. People smoked in restaurants, in shops, on the train, in the pub, at the footy and even in hospital.

Compare that to today when we often see small groups of smokers huddled together outside their office to grab a quick durry and it's clear how much society's attitudes have changed.

On the other hand, and even after the millions that have been spent encouraging people to quit, the latest figures from Australian Health Tracker show there are more than 5000 local people still regularly lighting up as we mark another World No Tobacco Day this Friday, May 31.

Almost one-in five adults across the Bathurst local government area is a smoker, slightly above the state average of 16 per cent. And the rates are even higher among many neighbouring LGAs.

Many of those will be older smokers who took up the habit years before the most graphic commercials were created and after a lifetime of addiction they would find it very difficult to quit now.

But if it was only older smokers still buying cigarettes then the industry would be in rapid decline.

More alarming, then, is the fact that so many young people are still taking up the habit even knowing very well the damage tobacco can do.

While the rate of teen smoking has fallen from around one-in-four in the early 1990s to about five per cent now, that is still thousands more young people smoking than common sense would deem plausible.

Much of the glamour previously associated with smoking has been stripped away by the photos of gangrenous feet now printed on the packets, TV shows can no longer show actors lighting up on screen in a bid to lure in the young, and tobacco sponsorship of major sporting events has also been banned in this country.

At the same time, packets of cigarettes are now kept hidden inside locked cabinets at the supermarket and newsagency, yet still new people take up smoking every day.

We've come a long way, certainly, but there is still much further to go yet.