Public places like offices, stores, bars, restaurants, private clubs, bowling alleys, dormitories and stadiums in Illinois will no longer be places where you can light up. Also smoking is banned within 15 feet of entrances, exits and windows. No kidding!

It has been a couple weeks since my debut with StarLife. It sort of unfolded in the most natural way, the timing was just right- my husband and I have become empty nesters and I now have a lot of free time to spare. How can I say no to an opportunity of a lifetime?

My challenge will always be finding that middle ground, the common thread. My stories will always have relevance to life there as well as life here. For a change, feeling like an Oreo cookie is not at all that bad. So let's dive in.

If you're planning a trip out to the American East, specifically the Chicago area in 2008, here's one tip…leave your pack of Marlboros behind.

The cloud of second-hand smoke will finally be lifted starting January 1st. Illinois' Gov. Blagojevich signed the Smoke-Free Illinois Act last Monday. What this means is Illinois is now the 22nd state that has embraced the banning of indoor smoking from public places and workplaces starting January 1, 2008.

Public places like offices, stores, bars, restaurants, private clubs, bowling alleys, dormitories and stadiums will no longer be places where you can light up. Also smoking is banned within 15 feet of entrances, exits and windows. No kidding!

So where can smokers go? Their homes, their cars, tobacco shops, private and semi-private rooms in nursing homes and up to 25 percent of hotel rooms. What happens if you get caught? There's a fine of $100 to $250 and businesses could be fined up to $2500 after a third violation.

I remember when I first started at my job 17 years ago. The lunchroom was ground zero for all the smokers I worked with. The two 15-minute breaks were split up into fifteen 2-minute cigarette breaks a day especially in the cold months. After all who wants to go outside when it's 10 degrees below and freeze their butts off (no pun intended)!

Zoom in to the present and that particular scenario is a thing of the past. Little by little, the hold on the smoking ban has started to get really tighter. Quietly the smokers have become second-class citizens around town. They subject themselves to the harshness of winter just to get a dose of nicotine. They creatively find ways to break the two 15-minute breaks into increments of time they hope will be left unnoticed by their bosses. They resort to disappearing acts every few minutes. The workload gets done around their cigarette breaks.

Then of course there's the side effect of being around them. If you work in an enclosed area, forget about showering everyday. The smoker's smell or stench transfers over to you like a bottle of cheap French perfume especially after an episode of frantic chain smoking. If your coats hang side by side, you might as well schedule a trip to the dry cleaner that day. Then of course there's the root of all these changes - second-hand smoking. The worse of its kind!

Second-hand smoking has been found to cause cancer, stroke, heart disease, respiratory ailments and SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome. The California Environmental Protection Agency in its June 2005 executive summary identified second-hand smoking as the cause of approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.

Another staggering data comes from the 2001 California Health Interview Survey. CHIS pointed out that 24 percent of male smokers are Filipino Americans. This data was taken from collected information by phone interview from 55,428 randomly selected households and over sampled another 1765 households of specific ethnic groups in California.

Whew, with all these chilling stats and a sure ticket to one's early demise, nothing has deterred a smoker from lighting up one more time. Not even the skyrocketing price of a pack of cigarettes can stop them, 6 bucks a pack in some areas around town is not a red light at all.

If there's one thing I can say about all these is the law here is pretty darn strict about selling cigarettes to minors, anyone under 18. It is a controversial law since kids under -8 are allowed to smoke and possess cigarettes. But if you are caught selling cigarettes to minors and buying for them, the penalty is pretty steep and worse you take the risk of losing your business license.

As my interest peaked, I wonder what the Philippines is doing about it. I found two laws against smoking - one is the National Consumer Act that requires the printing of warning labels on cigarette packs and then the second one is the Republic Act No. 9211, otherwise known as the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003, a law designed to shield the non-smoking public from the ills of cigarettes and seeks to regulate the packaging, use, sale or distribution and advertisements of tobacco products.

But here's a more staggering nugget of information I uncovered. In 2003 alone, the entire Philippines consumed 82 billion sticks of cigarettes. Billions of cigarettes…that's more than enough to fire up the chimneys in the entire state of Illinois for a long, long time in the dead of winter. Holy cow…

But let's be real. Quitting is hard. How many people have tried different things - patches, pills, drugs, hypnosis, counseling, and even quitting cold turkey. I am sure the resolve is there but the craving overpowers any health or mortality scare. One has to be really, really determined to quit to make it. My own father kept smoking after a few heart attacks. This guy I know has diabetes but he tells me his smoking has no bearing on his health. People still smoke despite developing that distinctive cough and throaty voice.

It's a fix. It's an addiction. It becomes a way of life, stinky, but a way of life nevertheless. It's what goes best with coffee in the morning while reading the newspaper. It's what you have in the other hand when one hand is holding that bottle of beer. It's what calms your nerves. It's what completes the picture as you arch your neck and pivot your chin when you blow that smoke. It's a social statement for some, maybe a sense of virility for men.

Smokers I am sure do not carry a death wish. There's no question that this is a difficult habit to kick. It is an everyday struggle for a lot of people. But one thing worth mentioning is this will be one of those fights that will linger for a long time. It's the little people versus the cigarette manufacturers, the giants in this economic war. And yes, it is all about economics. Imagine how much money goes to the cigarette manufacturers' lobbyists in Washington? Even Philip Morris has youth smoking prevention programs to offset the health hazards, a unique deal that sounds like good public relations via the back door.

As the tobacco giants and the proponents of the smoking ban duke it out, I am left thinking about the next kid who picks up the bad habit or the older man who has emphysema but still chooses to go to the corner store to buy a stick of cigarette.

In my little corner of the world, I applaud those who have quit, those who are trying to quit and those who are thinking of quitting. It is your first bold step towards reclaiming your health and eventually the quality of your life.

But don't wait too long if you're thinking about quitting and traveling at the same time. If you are planning to fly to my neck of the woods soon, check out the different states' laws on smoking before you light up that next cigarette when you get here. The last thing you want is to get busted by the cigarette police and forced to cuff up the money to pay the fine. Now that's what you will definitely call a bad trip!

Till next time…spread love and kindness everywhere you go.