House pages told to snuff out smoking

The high schoolers hired to work as errand-running “pages” in the Iowa House have been told not to smoke in uniform. Many of the high school pages at the statehouse are 18 years old, which means they can legally smoke. At the beginning of this year, a few took smoking breaks at the east entrance to the capitol. House staff in charge of the pages held a meeting, though, and asked the kids not to smoke while on duty and in uniform, which is a blue blazer with a big nametag. Just before yesterday’s House debate on teen smoking, the House Sergeant at Arms patroled the capitol to make sure none of the high school pages were smoking. Capitol police have never issued tickets to underage smokers, but did check earlier this year and found two of the smoking pages were 18.