By Patrick Wilson and Jaedda Armstrong VIRGINIA BEACH State health officials have received at least 70 complaints that businesses in eastern Virginia violated the restaurant smoking ban since it went into effect Dec. 1. That number is low, they said.

VIRGINIA BEACH Quietly signs went up Tuesday signaling to customers that things had changed. On the first day of the state ban on smoking inside restaurants, police didn't storm into bars, snuffing out cigarettes and doling out $25 fines. And state officials didn't troll for lawbreakers, writing up health-code violations for restaurant owners to address.

By Jaedda Armstrong Puffing a Marlboro and sipping a margarita, Patty Turney sat at the bar for happy hour at Norfolk's Colley Cantina. She had only a few more hours to enjoy her cigarette. At 11:59, the staff planned to urge patrons to hurry up and "smoke 'em if you got 'em."

By Steve Szkotak RICHMOND Something unusual is cropping up alongside the tomatoes, eggplant and okra in Scott Byars' vegetable garden — the elephantine leaves of 30 tobacco plants.

By Emery P. Dalesio RALEIGH, N.C.  North Carolina legislators on Wednesday put further distance between a past steeped in tobacco and a present focused on health care and research enterprises by approving a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars.

RALEIGH, N.C.  The North Carolina Senate has put off debate on a bill that would ban smoking at most work sites, restaurants and public places because some Democrats aren't sold on the idea.

For Clee Garrard, smoking helps relieve the tension from his job at the state prison in Sussex County. A new federal tax on cigarettes, however, is putting extra stress on his wallet. The pack of Newports he buys every other day now costs him 62 cents more. The federal tax on cigarettes jumped almost 160 percent Wednesday – and it wasn’t an April Fools’ Day joke.

VIRGINIA BEACH Gov. Timothy M. Kaine signed legislation Monday that bans smoking in bars and restaurants in Virginia, a state that first traded in tobacco nearly four centuries ago.

VIRGINIA BEACH Candy Mitchum runs Pinboys at the Beach on Laskin Road. The bowling center offers beer and snack-bar foods like burgers, hot dogs, fries, sandwiches. "You wouldn't, I think, come in and order dinner," Mitchum says, "unless you were bowling."

By EMERY P. DALESIO RALEIGH, N.C. North Carolina legislators have begun debating a ban on workplace smoking across a state that is still the country's largest tobacco producer.