HARRISBURG — Ashtrays will soon get tossed from break rooms, smoking lounges, diner tables and restaurant bars across Pennsylvania, now that a statewide smoking ban is about to become law.

The law's reach — most private businesses and public spaces must be smokefree — as well as its complicated exemptions will create headaches for some business owners.

Restaurant owners will have to tell longtime diners and barflies to light up outside, or separate the bar from the restaurant.

Owners and employees of small businesses from machine shops to law firms who have smoked side by side for years will have to decide whether to change their habits or break the law.

At Starters Pub near Bethlehem, the smoking section and the ashtrays at the bar will soon be gone — and forgotten.

"We get a lot of calls from people asking if we're smokefree, so I actually see business increasing," said manager Alix Griffin.

Some business owners are unhappy over what they view as a government intrusion into a private matter.

At MIF Inc., a coal-hauling business in Brockway in rural, northwestern Pennsylvania, co-owner Joni Paladino faces the prospect of apdmonishing drivers not to light up anymore in the company's trucks.

"Do I have to monitor them in their trucks? And if so, how do I go about doing that?" she wondered. "Are the state police ... going to sniff their trucks to see if they've been smoking? Do I have to do ashtray checks at the end of the day when they come back?"

Then there are the two mechanics who are allowed to smoke while fixing the trucks at MIF's sister business, the Johns Garage and Parts, owned by her brother.

"It's a bit of an intrusion when there are four people and they're saying, 'Well you really aren't intelligent enough to handle this workplace situation yourself,"' Paladino said. "'The Legislature in Harrisburg will do it for you."'

The segregated break rooms for employees who smoke at the 36 Redner's Warehouse Markets groceries will soon be a thing of the past — not long after the Reading-based owner began a health and wellness campaign to lower its insurance tab.

"It plays right in with our initiative," said Eric C. White of Redner's Markets Inc.

The legislation, nitpicked and beaten up for better than 18 months in the Capitol, was scheduled to be signed into law today by Gov. Ed Rendell, who pushed for a smokefree law as a way to cut health care costs.

Many Pennsylvania restaurants, hotels and other businesses, as well as state offices, have voluntarily gone smokefree in recent years.