Photo: © 2008 AAP/JULIAN SMITH

In the toughest crackdown on smoking ever seen in this country, council rangers will slug smokers with a $110 fine if they puff away on the streets of the city centre, in parks, near council buildings or shopping centres or outside the hospital.

"We’ve had a lot of support from the community and the Cancer Council," Greens councillor and ban proposer, Jeremy Buckingham, told The Sunday Telegraph.

"This isn't about being punitive; it's about creating a social pressure to ask smokers to smoke in areas where other people aren't around."

The decision has divided residents of Orange.

Mayor John Davis voted down the proposal and says it is too difficult to police.

"The whole city precinct, it just can’t work – smoking is not illegal."