A busy weekend meant hitting two concerts, one casino and Fairmount Park.

And at each establishment, its rules on smoking played a big role in the decisions my husband and I made about where to go and spend our money.

We don't smoke; no one in our household smokes. We live in Illinois, home to a statewide ban on smoking in public places.

We had planned on gambling a few dollars and eating at a restaurant on the Missouri side on Friday night, but as the cigarette smoke seeped into our lungs and our clothes we decided against it.  Instead, we headed back to Illinois and enjoyed several smoke-free hours.

On Saturday night, we headed to Fairmount in part because we knew we could sit in the grandstand or place our bets without a blue haze hanging in the air.

Simply put, we rarely visit businesses where we know we'll have to navigate through cigarette smoke. We love the Cardinals and share season tickets, but we speed walk once we hit the gates on the way out because of the people who light up the second they hit the street.

Ditto at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. No smoking in the seats, but it's fair game pretty much everywhere else. More speed-walking through the clouds, this time with my daughter.

The St. Louis city and county smoking ban goes into effect on Jan. 2, although it has more loopholes than the Illinois ban.

Are you one of the people looking forward to the ban, or one of the people who sees it as too much government? How often do the rules about smoking weigh on your decision on where to eat, shop or play? Or is cigarette smoke something you just put up with as a cost of going out?