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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (CBS/AP) ― Sandra Reese has stopped shaking since she stopped smoking, and plans to go on a Caribbean vacation with the $800 she has saved so far from not buying cigarettes.

But Jill Brown thinks government is reaching too far when it says she can't have a cigarette with dinner in a restaurant. And Michael Dickerson's emphysema pains him every time he has to breathe in the smoke from gamblers at the casino where he works.

One year ago Sunday, New Jersey passed one of the toughest anti-smoking laws in the nation that banned lighting up in workplaces and public buildings. State officials say thousands of people have quit the habit, the air is cleaner, and people are getting healthier.

A notable exception to the law remains: The Atlantic City casinos. But even there, a restrictive new law takes effect on Sunday limiting smoking to no more than 25 percent of the casino floor.

"New Jersey's residents are now breathing air that is dramatically cleaner than it was a year ago," said the state health commissioner, Dr. Fred Jacobs. "It not only makes going out for a bite to eat or to your job more pleasant, it also extends lives.

"We may be saving hundreds of lives a year, all by removing one element -- tobacco," he said.

Jacobs said that last year, 4,700 people stopped smoking with the help of hotlines and Web sites New Jersey offered. One of them was Reese, 45, of Jersey City, an executive assistant at a health care company who kicked the habit for good in November.

"I have more energy, I'm more alert, I don't have headaches," she said. "My teeth are cleaner and I smell better. I don't have that smell in my hair and my clothes."

But Jill Brown, a 39-year-old state government worker from Trenton, resents not being able to have a cigarette with dinner when she goes out to eat.

"If you're dining with your loved one, it's not fair if you want to smoke," she said.

Other smokers accept that not everyone wants to breathe their secondhand smoke.

"It's a bad habit," said Jesse Averhart, a 54-year-old paralegal from Trenton who has smoked since he was 13. "Others shouldn't have to suffer for it."

Jacobs said that every year, between 1,000 and 1,800 nonsmokers in New Jersey die from exposure to secondhand smoke.

"There is no safe exposure level for secondhand smoke, and that's the end of that," he said.

But the end is not quite at hand for workers in Atlantic City's 11 casinos, which were specifically exempted from the smoking ban by the state legislature. Lawmakers feared the loss of crucial tourism jobs if smokers took their money to other states where casinos still permit smoking.

After protests from many casino workers, the city council in Atlantic City was poised to enact a total ban on casino smoking. But the casino industry protested, fearing the loss of 20 percent of its revenue, and as many as 3,400 jobs.

The council then adopted a compromise ordinance in February requiring at least 75 percent of the casino floor to be nonsmoking.

It takes effect on Sunday, not a moment too soon for Michael Dickerson. He is a veteran table games supervisor who has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that he attributes to 27 years in the gambling pits.

"It's tough. Certain spots you get all the smoke, and it's real bad," Dickerson said. "It does damage to you. It's hard to breathe.

"If you work at a computer and there's smokers near you, you're stuck," he said. "You can't leave the computer. And in the pits, you can't stay away from it; there's just too many smokers."

Jacobs said he favors extending the smoking ban to the entire casino floor.

In the meantime, former smokers like Lynn Masiello, a 43-year-old kitchen and bathroom designer from Hoboken, are glad they kicked the habit.

"I got a taste of what it might be like to become incapacitated when I got hit by a car and was laid up and unable to walk," she said. "I though, `Oh my God, what if I had to be attached to an oxygen tank the rest of my life because I had emphysema and I could have stopped smoking and didn't?"

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)