I think it's worrying on a number of levels - 1. Do parents have to give permission for their child (and until they leave year 12 I think they should be deemed a child regardless of if they are 18 or not) to be permitted to smoke at school? Are parents even aware that this is being allowed? 2. Is this going to encourage a pile of other kids to take up smoking for the novality - they are kids and they are, well, dumb at times (god knows I was). 3.Is it going to encourage kids who would have been just too scared to do it previously. 4. What message do we send when our tuckshops aren't allowed to sell 'unhealthy' foods yet we give kids permission to fill their lungs with all kinds of chemicals - seems pretty hypocritical.
I guess my view is that smoking DOES happen in, or just outside of, school grounds during school hours in nearly every high school in Australia. Whether the schools turn a blind eye to it or 'permit' it by giving students a designated area in which to smoke is the issue, don't get distracted by the thought of your kids 'being around smokers' - sorry, it's either already happened or is going to at some stage. This is life - learning and growing and being exposed to things so that you can make your own personal decisions.
To answer the questions you posed (and were reiterated by other posters):
1) All I can speak of with experience here, is my old school's lunch pass policy - I don't know about this particular school's policy but if they had any sense, they'd implement a similar policy for the smoking area.
Lunch passes had to be applied for by parents/guardians, and were approved on a case-by-case basis (in this scenario, a parent saying, 'My child is a pack-a-day smoker' would be approved, a child who by their parents' admission only smoked one or two a day would be denied a 'smoking pass' as they can control their habit and stick to smoking outside of school hours). Holders of lunch passes were (arguably) held to a higher standard of behaviour than their peers and the revoking of their lunch pass was often the first step made in a disciplinary action plan - I imagine I would do the same for the smoking pass if I were the principal. Lunch passes could be suspended for days, weeks, terms, or the student could be banned from holding one indefinitely. Serious behavioural offences involving term bans meant the student (and parents) had to re-apply at the beginning of the next school term and would go through the whole process again - inconvenient for all concerned but it ensured parents were completely informed of what was going on with their child's ability to leave school grounds during lunch hours, and they had to approve for an application to even be lodged with admin.
If I were in charge of the school and wanted to implement a smoking area for students, I'd do just that. Students who had been denied, or had not applied, for a smoking pass would not be allowed access to the area at any time and I feel that this is more sensible than 'turning a blind eye' and thereby allowing non-smoking students to be around smokers (as I said, smoking HAPPENS, usually on school grounds, but by 'ignoring' the problem it is only giving curious teens free access to cigarettes and risky behaviours through their peers).

2) As above, I think kids are definitely NOT immune to peer pressures in all schools, whether they have a designated smoking area or not. In fact I feel that a designated smoking area may discourage non-smoking students from 'experimenting' as a supervised area removes some of the taboos and 'mystery' surrounding smoking, and again, if implemented in a way that only allows 'deserving' students access to the area, and having them supervised by staff, it would be better than just ignoring the fact that smoking happens on school grounds as teachers would be able to head non-smokers off at the pass and they would be less likely to get their hands on cigarettes, let alone be able to smoke on school grounds.

3) It could... but ultimately, the responsibility lies with the smoker (or non-smoker), and them alone. Peers, parents, school programs and mentors can influence a person's behaviour, but the buck stops with the individual, and again, I don't think there's really that much of a difference between a student attending a school with a strict no-smoking policy, and one attending a school with a policy like this where students who are smokers, are permitted to smoke in a way that the school can control and supervise.

4) Okay, so speaking quite plainly here - I think the tuckshop rules are absolute crap. They're irrelevant. The message being sent here is that the government and hysterical, overbearing do-gooders like to be able to dictate to the rest of society what they can and cannot do with (or to) their own bodies and impose their personal moral compass onto the general population. Again, it comes back to the fact that school is a tiny version of the REAL WORLD - where people make poor choices, people are exposed to different actions and behaviours and have to learn to make decisions that are right FOR THEM without being forced into one group's idea of 'right' because there are no other options. Our school tuckshop was fracking awesome, now I imagine I'd rather skip meals entirely than be FORCED to 'make healthy choices'. There's no choice in that at all, so yes, while it may be considered hypocritical, I also believe that the forced removal of choice from students with tuckshop items was hypocritical in the first place


Glamourcide: I think if a student was as addicted as you were and smoking 20+ a day, the school would have a duty of care to help you. This is obviously very dangerous for a young persons health. I think allowing this behaviour would be consciously allowing a student to self harm.
I have to disagree with you on that one, BBB. Falling into the trap of nicotine addiction despite all the information that is available to teens, despite the discouragement and disapproval of my parents etc, is nobody's fault but my own. I chose it, I live with it. God knows schools are stretched to the limit as it is, trying to find enough funding and enough hours in the day to accommodate all this extra education that parents aren't providing or that kids simply aren't listening to at home... why is it the school's problem to fix a habit/addiction that I started out of school hours, on my own accord, in spite of the drug and alcohol education programs provided by the school? It's not. They have no duty of care to me whatsoever - by the same token they have no obligation to accommodate my smoking habit by allowing me to have a designated area in which to do it, but as long as students at this school are provided access to education programs and counselling options if they choose to seek help, then I just see no problem with it.
Basically, it's not an ideal situation and I *do* agree with all of you that it's a pretty messy situation. But speaking from my own experience - if it came down to A or B (A being that the school maintained a strict no-smoking policy and I got suspended so many times that I missed out on graduating and screwed my whole future over a few cigarettes, and B being permitted to smoke under supervision during school hours so that I could remain at school, get my work done and achieve the results I desired) for my own children, I'd be a reluctant supporter of option B. One may consider that a twisted perspective, but I see the other option (watching your child's future suffer just to prove a point) as like cutting off one's nose to spite their face