The prohibition on smoking indoors in public places went in effect state-wide at 12 a.m. Friday.

Many applaud the move as a step toward a healthier populace, while others see it as an infringement on property rights, even civil rights.

Smoking has been banned in workplaces and government buildings from more than a decade in Maryland, and a few counties, include Charles, also already had an all-out indoor ban.

The law, signed in 2007, includes a provision that would allow businesses to appeal to the local health board for a waiver to allow indoor smoking if they can prove its hurting business.

They would have to prove that food and drink sales declined by at least 15 percent for two months without smoking, compared to the last two years of sales in those two months.

Tobacco shops are also exempt.

At local bars Thursday night, and most likely all across Maryland, smokers mourned together on their last night enjoying God’s gift of smoking and drinking simultaneously. The day will probably be etched in some peoples’ minds forever.

There are many complaints about the law in the media, but not much applause.

Here’s a story about a guy telling his customers to ignore the law, and another one about Maryland snubbing its heritage.

As an ex-smoker as of next week, I don’t know if it’s good or bad. OK, of course it’s good, becuase in the end, less people will die.

Actually smoking is the worst thing you can do to yourself, next to of course standing in a burning house your whole life, or sticking needles in your eyes.

I’m not sure if this makes me a socialist or something, but I’m astonished that companies are permitted to manufacture, advertise and sell a product that ONLY kills people.

They say 3,000 children start smoking each DAY. If that’s a half-truth, it’s insane.

An average of 1,500 people a day from smoking-related diseases in the US according to one study, more than all murders, car crashes, suicides, drugs, alcohol, AIDS, and needles in the eyes.

Why not prohibit the mass-marketing of tobacco in small packages. You wouldn’t for long get away with selling tiny rat poison pills at the gas station if hundreds of children started eating them every day.

What if you could only buy tobacco loose, by the pound, or something?

That surely would take away some of the luster for children, and you could bank on laziness helping millions of adults quit.