First it was elevators. Then smoking was banned on the job and in restaurants. Now the next frontier in smoking prohibition is in sight: the great outdoors.

Around the country, nonsmokers are staking out new territory in their quest to restrict smoking and claim fresh air.

Take Santa Cruz, Calif., where smokers can no longer take a puff while standing in line to buy movie tickets or wait for a bus.

Or Mesa, Ariz., where smoking is prohibited within 25 feet of any public building.

Or Sharon, Mass., which has banned smoking in the town park and on its two public beaches.

Such limits are in place in at least seven states.

Maryland, which has led the way in other smoking regulations, is taking a more conservative approach this time. Besides restrictions at Oriole Park and outside some hospitals and schools, the idea has not been embraced here. Prohibiting smoking in a public park is apparently just too much.

"You can really get carried away with a notion of where you restrict smoking in terms of an outdoor area," said Al Ertel, of the Coalition for a Smoke Free Maryland. "As more and more indoor areas become smoke-free, this issue may be revisited. But at this point, I don't see it."

Predictably, the Washington-based Tobacco Institute says it foresees no such movement.

"It is so blatantly unfair and so scientifically unjustified," said Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the institute. "We have only a prudent level of concern.

"We care about our 45 million person customer base," he added. "As 25 percent of the taxpaying public, they're entitled to their share of fresh air."

Despite efforts to overturn some of these latest bans, activists say they know of no successfulchallenge so far.

Some predict that the efforts begun across the country -- in some of the most progressive as well as most conservative of states -- will soon gain momentum. Besides California, Arizona and Massachusetts, laws have been passed in Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Hawaii.

"I think this trend is definitely going to continue," said John F Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, a Washington-based anti-smoking group. "Once we see that it works, we're going to see it continue. This is how movements start."

In many places, outdoor smoking bans are succeeding not through help from powerful anti-smoking lobbies but because individual citizens said they simply got fed up.

In Sharon, Mass., for instance, Dana Bottorff grew tired of breathing tobacco smoke at the park and continually digging cigarette butts out of the public sandboxes and beaches where her toddler liked to play. She became even more determined after suggesting to the chairman of the town health board that smoking in those places be banned -- and being met with derision.

"He thought it was the most whacked-out suggestion he had ever heard," Bottorff said. "I told him he would see that I wasn't joking."

He did.

Although many of her neighbors also thought the idea was somewhat nutty, Bottorff circulated petitions and found plenty of people ready and eager to sign. At the annual town meeting, she pointed out that smoking bans had become routine in other outdoor venues across the country, such as stadiums and ballparks. This wasn't such a big leap, she argued.

Her idea passed in spring 1995 with 57 percent approval. A few months later, an attempt to reverse the ban was voted down by an even higher margin. That is because people could see that the idea worked, Bottorff says.

"By the time of the October town meeting, we had already had a successful summer with no cigarette smoke at the playground and beach, and people loved it," said Bottorff, who runs a small public relations firm.

"They commented that the town beach was generally more clean and litter free, and they attributed it to the smoking ban. To this day there has never been a citation. It's a law people respect."

Mesa, Ariz., went with a far more restrictive approach, banning smoking in almost any public place -- within 25 feet of people or public buildings.

"People coming in and out of a building shouldn't have to be exposed to smoke," said Mayor Wayne Brown. "It was an inconvenience they had to walk through."

The law's chief promoter, a local physician named Clifford Harris, goes further.

"We're not talking about some benign thing," he said. "Second-hand smoke kills. We've had no fistfights. I think there's only been three fines levied since it went into effect."

In March, after a battle by smokers to repeal the Mesa law, voters renewed support for the restrictions with 69 percent approval.

What has surprised supporters in many communities is resistance from national anti-smoking groups, which say they're still working to secure their early victories.

"I don't think it's a priority," said Julia Carol, co-director of Americans for Non-Smokers Rights, in Berkeley, Calif. "The reality is that most of the country is still not covered by strong, smoke-free workplace protections. While this is a public health issue, our goal is to work with cultural change -- not try to shove things down people's throats before they're ready for it."

Bottorff admits that such bans are pushing the envelope.

"The anti-smoking, anti-tobacco establishment feels it needs to move slowly and incrementally," she said.

"They don't want to endanger the very real progress they are making in the workplace and in public accommodations.

"I understand," she added. "They have to stay the course. That's why individuals need to push the new frontier. It's not going to happen any other way."