It probably seemed like a good idea, years ago. As workplaces started to outlaw smoking, smokers were banished to the great outdoors. Now I’m not so sure.

Across the street from my office is a junior college. The people who attend its classes aren’t allowed to smoke in the building. So they gather in clots outside during breaks, blocking the sidewalk and creating their own little malodorous weather system. On my way to my favorite lunch spot I have to hold my breath and veer out into the traffic to get around them.

When the smoking bans were first enacted, I remember, some workplaces designated smoking rooms, nasty little nooks with acrid air and metal chairs. In retrospect, I long for those little ghettos. It’s where the nicotine fiends belong. I’ve lost my sympathy.

Here’s why. Having been banished from the office and from most public indoor spaces, smokers have now taken over the outdoors. This has come home to me in a number of ways in recent months. One occasion was late in the summer when I went with one of my kids to her college orientation. The building where we met had imperfect AC and I fled outdoors to be (so I thought) refreshed. A nice terrace beckoned, with tables and chairs.

But guess what? Every other chair was inhabited by a smoker. I couldn’t smell the breeze — I couldn’t even breathe. A sneezing fit sent me running back indoors.

Later that summer I went to the beach. Ah … pure sunshine and salt air, right? Nope. The smokers infested the place. The sand was full of butts. I couldn’t even escape by going into the water, as loyal tobacco fiends stood in the surf, holding the precious ciggy aloft to avoid getting it doused.

Smokers sometimes come to my house and I should be grateful, I suppose, when they retreat to the front porch to inhale their poison. I don’t feel so grateful, though, when I find butts all over my garden.

The last straw has appeared just in the past two weeks. On my way to lunch I’ve encountered a new phenomenon. Not content merely to stand in clumps outside the building, some of the local addicts have decided to fashion their own personal outdoor living room. They now SIT in the middle of the sidewalk, utterly unapologetic as pedestrians have to navigate out into traffic or squeeze up against the side of the building. Some have even gone so far as to set up little laptop offices right there on the pavement, with their clipboards, cell phones, drinks, snacks and ciggies neatly arranged in front of them. They look very much at home.

I like to think I’m a tolerant person at heart. I used to be addicted myself. I know what the craving is like. But you know, it’s been well over a decade since workplaces started banning smoking. A lot of smart people took that opportunity to kick the habit and relieve themselves of the necessity to slink outside to indulge in it.

I’m also remembering why I started smoking in the first place. I was in college and at social gatherings, everybody smoked. Just hanging around at a frat party or a card game made me feel like I was going to suffocate.

Someone suggested it wouldn’t bother me as much if I were smoking too — so I tried it. It worked. Within a couple of years, I was up to two packs a day.

With my first pregnancy, I quit, and the condition only magnified my earlier revulsion. Riding in the back of a bus, my sensitized nose told me when someone who had been smoking stepped through the front door.

Because smokers are used to it, they often don’t realize how gross it is to have to inhale their exhalations. It can throw a person with asthma into an attack or send a pregnant woman over the edge of nausea.

By now I think they’ve had enough warnings about what it does to their own health. It’s time to stop coddling them. If they have to lock themselves in their own stinky vehicles or sneak down alleys to indulge, so be it. I’m tired of being nice about it.

I want the beach back, and the stairwells of our parking garage, and the terraces outside public buildings. And the sidewalk. Now that we’ve gotten them out of the workplace, I’m ready to take back the outside.

Times change and public perceptions about acceptable behavior change. Yes, I have dear friends who smoke. They’re not bad people. But they don’t have the right to monopolize the great outdoors, either. They just need to quit.