As the state Legislature heads into the second month of this session, some lawmakers are finally moving to snuff out a dangerous and nasty habit — smoking inside the state Capitol.

Tuesday, the House Public Health and Welfare Committee passed a bill that would bar smokers from lighting up anywhere they please in the historic Capitol building. Smokers would still be allowed to light up in designated smoking areas and in lawmakers’ private offices.

Can anyone else smell the smoky irony?

Lawmakers can sit around tables puffing away as they ponder how to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars the state received as part of a settlement deal with tobacco companies.

Wasn’t the very nature of the state’s lawsuit inherently dependent upon proving that smoking caused health problems?

The argument could be made that, if the state allows smoking to go inside the state Capitol, perhaps we need to give those millions back.

Dozens of young people — from schools on field trips to the teenage pages that work on the House floor — are in and out of the Capitol each day. What kind of a message does that send those youth to see lawmakers puffing away on cigarettes and cigars?

The notion that lawmakers are smoking cigarettes, while state funds are going toward preventing our youth from starting tobacco, is more than a little hypocritical.

And we won’t even begin to debate the issue and effects of second-hand smoke on those children and anyone else who enters the center of state government.

Smoking in the Capitol needs to stop — now. We urge lawmakers to quickly pass the bill, House Bill 551, and keep their personal habits out of our faces.

We just want lawmakers to put their mouths where their money is.