HARRISBURG -- Brittany Holmes, a junior and pre-med major at Duquesne University, got on a bus Sunday afternoon with students from several other schools, including Allegheny College and California University of Pennsylvania, and headed east to Harrisburg.

After staying overnight at a local motel, they joined at least 100 other college students from around the state -- from schools such as Penn State, Mansfield, West Chester, Millersville, Elizabethtown, Ursinus and others -- and headed for the rotunda of the state Capitol.

The mission? To urge state legislators to write a tough new law that will protect nonsmoking patrons and workers in restaurants, taverns, private clubs, cigar bars and casinos from what the college students say are the well-documented dangers of the toxins in secondhand cigarette smoke.

Ms. Holmes, who is from Bradford, said she has worked as a waitress and bartender in private clubs where many patrons liked to smoke, and as a result, "I breathed in a lot of toxic, secondhand smoke."

She and others held signs reading: "How Much Longer Must I Hold My Breath?," "My Health Matters," "No Loopholes," "Protect People, Not Secondhand Smoke," and "Don't Gamble With Our Health."

All the students were from chapters of a group called Colleges Against Cancer. Everyone wore an identical black T-shirt with white writing on it, which said, "We are dying to be smoke-free ... literally."

The rally was coordinated by the American Cancer Society, which also wants smoking banned in almost all workplaces and public places. It is hoping the law will be enacted before legislators leave for the summer on June 30.

The cancer society is one of many anti-smoking groups talking with a six-member, House-Senate conference committee that is charged with writing the smoke-free legislation. The committee has set April 29 as a deadline for coming up with a final bill to be sent to the House and Senate for action, but that deadline could still be pushed back.