By Kathleen Murphy
Stateline.org
The arrival of the new year means no more smoking in Maine bars, higher ticket prices for glitzy Las Vegas shows, and a crackdown on rowdy baseball fans in Illinois – all that and much more courtesy of new state laws born at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1.

For openers, the flip of the calendar means:

These changes are among the hundreds of new state laws taking effect immediately, although they will doubtless be followed throughout the year by reams of other legislation throughout the 50 states.

Among the New Year’s Day crop, a California law gives spam recipients in the Golden State the right to sue for $1,000 for each unsolicited e-mail they receive. In Nebraska, a trip to the park gets more expensive, with annual permits increasing from $14 to $17 and daily permits from $2.50 to $3.

New laws in several states take aim at transportation.

Don’t even think about driving a car while watching television in California, thanks to a new law aimed at distracted drivers. And if you’re driving home on a highway from a New Year’s party in Illinois, don’t go slow in the left lane. As of midnight, the left lane is only for passing.

“With more congestion, more traffic, and with this new advent of road rage, it really is something we decided we needed to address,” said state Sen. Dan Rutherford, (R), who sponsored the left-lane law.

Other new state laws cover health care issues affecting everything from tongue-splitting to who pays for birth control pills. Illinois will now permit only doctors and dentists to slice the end of a tongue down the middle so that it resembles a snake’s forked version. And Illinois also requires insurers who provide drug coverage to include contraceptive drugs and devices approved by the Food & Drug Administration. Finally, Illinois insurers also must cover the cost of colorectal cancer exams and lab tests.

California’s health care laws change significantly by, among other things, requiring hospitals to have one nurse for every six patients in general medical wards. And that state joins Illinois and New York with a ban on over-the-counter sales of the herbal weight-control supplement ephedra. The federal government announced Dec. 30 it was issuing a nationwide ban on the same drug, scheduled to take effect in March at the earliest.

Here are some other new laws involving various issues:

Transportation: