The Maryland House and Senate have both voted in favor of banning smoking in bars and restaurants but also allows business owners to petition for "hardship waivers," the Washington Post reported March 25.

Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to sign the bill, approved 98-40 this week in the state House; the Senate passed a similar measure earlier. The proposed state law would give business owners the ability to apply for a waiver of the ban if they can prove that it hurts their bottom line. Local communities with tougher smoking bans already on the books would have to pass new laws in order to override the loophole in the state law.

"It would boil down to who is going to control what is a hardship?" said restaurant owner Lynn Martins, a past president of the Montgomery County Restaurant Association. "We've rolled with the ban. We survived. The people who have gone out of business are gone."

In the 1990s, Maryland passed a statewide smoking ban that included most public places, but not bars and restaurants.