BY RICARDO SANDOVAL
 Herald World Staff

 MEXICO CITY -- It's billed as a clean start for anti-smoking efforts in Mexico,
 where 45,000 people died last year of smoking-related illness and a million more
 took up the tobacco habit.

 But a new rule banning smoking in Mexico's federal office buildings is already in
 trouble. In a culture in which smokers light up pretty much wherever they please,
 experts fear Mexican bureaucrats will ignore the congressional edict, and that it
 won't be enforced.

 Guadalupe Ponciano, a cardiovascular specialist at the government-run Manuel
 G. Gonzales General Hospital, called the congressional move ``the strongest
 action yet by the government against a group of rampant smokers in Mexico.''

 But as with past rules against smoking, Ponciano fears the new regulation may
 fail because of a lack of enforcement that's chronic in Mexico.

 ``Well, you caught me smoking, so what does that say about how I feel about the
 rule?'' asked Concepcion Garcia, a 40-year-old secretary who was puffing away
 inside a government office building. ``No one here has told us anything about a
 new rule against smoking. I'll stop when they force me to.''

 Garcia is among the estimated 14 million Mexicans who smoke and who are
 pushing up health-care costs. The numbers of smokers and smoking-related
 illnesses are growing fast. Public hospitals examined more than a million patients
 with smoking-related complaints last year, according to government figures.

 Progress against smoking in Mexico has been gradual.

 Only hospitals and passenger jets, it seems, are truly smoke-free. Mexicans have
 seen little or no enforcement of smoking rules in other public places. While chain
 restaurants are reserving more tables for nonsmokers, people in most Mexico
 City restaurants fire up with impunity.

 A waiter at La Guadalupana, a restaurant in southern Mexico City, joked that the
 no-smoking section was ``the table where you sit.''