Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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Dan Casey

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Beginning today, the foul, choking and potentially deadly fumes from burning tobacco will be absent from the vast majority of Virginia bars and restaurants.

For the many diehards who light up over their morning cups of coffee at Waffle House over on Franklin Road or in Troutville or Northwest Roanoke, that may cause some early-day jitters.

Tough.

For the rest of us -- roughly 83 percent of Virginians -- it means that finally we can dine wherever we choose without having to endure inconsiderate oafs who believe it's their right to pollute the indoor air we breathe.

I and my wife, along with former state Sen. Brandon Bell and his wife, will be celebrating the fresh air in the formerly smoking-allowed bar area of Brambleton Deli.

Chip Moore, the owner of that establishment, has made a courageous decision to go smoke-free.

Brambleton Deli didn't have to, because the bar area and a separate dining room have independent ventilation systems.

Under the law enacted this year, Moore could have simply hung a door at the bar entrance and allowed smoking there to continue.

Although he called the decision "really a crap shoot," Moore believes it's for the best in the long term.

"At first, I expect to lose a lot of my smoking customers," Moore told me last week. "But I expect they'll come back. ... For God's sake, if New York City can do it, we can do it here in Roanoke."

The other courageous person at Brambleton Deli tonight will be Bell.

When his extra-sensitive-to-smoke wife, Debbie, suggested he join the restaurant smoking ban movement back in 2003, Bell's first thought was that it would be political suicide.

But the former Republican state senator from Roanoke County joined that movement anyway. And by 2006 he was leading the charge.

Bell was the first state lawmaker who was able to steer a restaurant-smoking ban to passage in one of the General Assembly's chambers. He did that in 2006 and again in 2007.

That made the issue "real" in this commonwealth of tobacco.

Under the curious banner of "business rights," the House of Delegates rebuffed each of those efforts.

By 2007, Bell's own party kicked him out of the Senate. He says he believes it had little do with his cigarettes-out-of-restaurants crusade.

Either way, his actions are what paved the way for the law's enactment this year. Pro-smoking delegates didn't want to face their nonsmoking constituents in the 2009 elections.

As for you smokers, there will be no great shortage of smoke-filled rooms in Roanoke or ways to sate your nicotine addictions.

Corned Beef & Co. downtown, Awful Arthur's at Towers, the Community Inn in Raleigh Court and no doubt others are creating special fouled-air places just for you.

You will still be able to smoke in most outdoor seating areas, or at many private clubs such as the American Legion or the Elks (cough, cough).

In nonsmoking venues you can always dip snuff, chew nicotine gum, don a patch or suck on a lozenge. Or purchase a nonpolluting "electronic cigarette" online.

So please spare us the whining about your so-called "right" to make others ill.

No "right" to bear noxious burning tobacco is enshrined in the U.S. or Virginia Constitutions, or anywhere else for that matter.

The tables have turned, and that is all.

At the most, the breathing discomfort and dining-choice limitations you have so blithely imposed on the nonsmoking majority will be replaced by your angst at not being able to light up and pollute.

It's about time.