A sign in Grendel’s Den, a restaurant in Harvard Square, informs patrons of the city-wide smoking ban that takes effect today. The City Council passed an ordinance last June prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars.

Last Wednesday, smoke still filled the room at Whitney’s on JFK Street, and the regulars were enjoying their beers and cigarettes while they could.

Last June—after almost 20 years of back-and-forth and nearly a year of heavy debate—the Cambridge City Council passed a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars.

Today, the ban goes into effect.

The patrons at Whitney’s are not pleased with the development.

“If you don’t want to smoke, then go someplace that doesn’t,” Domenic Ladetto says, sipping his beer. “If you do not want to be around people who smoke in bars, go somewhere where they don’t.”

“It all comes down to the Benjamin,” he concludes.

Paul Romo, however, has the strongest criticism of the ban.

“I’m 47, I’ve been sold beer and cigarettes all my life,” Romo says. “I like both. But now as it has it, I can’t drink a beer on the sidewalk, and shortly I can’t smoke a cigarette in a bar. After a hard day’s work, I can’t have a beer and a cigarette in the same spot. Who doesn’t want to have a cigarette with their beer?”

Romo’s words evoke vocal agreement from his fellow smokers around the bar.

He has tapped into a feeling that many smokers cite, that their individual rights are continually being trampled on, that they can no longer enjoy the simple things in life.

But on the other side of the debate, supporters of the ban cite avoiding health risks, improving workplace safety, and increasing the general comfort of patrons as major reasons for the legislation. Many local backers hope that neighboring towns will follow Cambridge’s lead, and that eventually a statewide ban will be passed by the Massachusetts legislature.

The new ordinance has met strong opposition from local restaurant owners, who lobbied heavily to stop its passage. The owners charge that the ban will chase away their clientele and cause tension between bar neighbors and smokers banished to the sidewalk.

“For whatever reason, people smoke,” says John Clifford, the owner of the Green Street Grill in Central Square. “Most reports are that [the ban] hurts business, and it’s probably going to hurt working class places the most.… I forecast that there’s going to be trouble. The neighbors are going to complain. You have potentially two- to five-hundred people outside smoking.”

At Whitney’s, Tommy Lally, an off-duty bartender, listens to the patrons’ complaints as he smokes a cigarette at the far end of the bar.

“It’s ridiculous,” Lally says. “[Patrons] have to go outside and smoke.”