[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 17 (Thursday, February 24, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          TOBACCO AND CHILDREN

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this morning the Surgeon General issued 
the 23d Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, but the first, 
as far as I can recall, looking specifically on tobacco and children. 
The Surgeon General's report highlights the shocking extent to which 
our youngsters are now exposed to and use tobacco. As this report 
pointed out, fully one-third of all American youngsters now smoke or 
use smokeless tobacco.
  Mr. President, I rise today to speak about this and about America's 
tobacco in our children and how we parents and grandparents are 
unwittingly subsidizing their addiction to this often lethal product.
  There is, I believe, a great consensus in our Nation that smoking is 
bad for our kids and bad for our future, and yet we keep subsidizing 
the problem to a considerable degree.
  The Surgeon General pointed out in her report this morning--and I 
will quote from some parts of it--``There has been a continuing shift 
from advertising to promotion largely because of banning cigarette ads 
from broadcast media.'' Clearly, the Surgeon General's report goes on 
to say, ``young people are being indoctrinated to tobacco promotion at 
a susceptible time in their lives.''
  The Surgeon General's report continues:

       Current research suggests that pervasive tobacco promotion 
     has two major effects. It creates the perception that more 
     people smoke than actually do, and it provides a conduit 
     between actual self-image and ideal self-image. In other 
     words, smoking is made to look cool. Whether casual or not, 
     these effects foster the uptake of smoking, initiating for 
     many a dismal and relentless chain of effects.

  Mr. President, nearly 2 years ago I began an effort on the floor of 
the Senate to lower the tax deductibility of tobacco advertising. Since 
that time, the problem has only gotten worse, and the American taxpayer 
is still coughing up about $1 billion a year as a silent partner in 
subsidies to promote smoking.
  My legislation, which is cosponsored by Senators Bradley and 
Bingaman, will cut in half the taxpayer subsidy of tobacco promotion 
and will use 40 percent of the resulting revenues to finance a program 
of counteradvertising aimed at lowering the incidence of smoking 
especially among children. This measure would raise about $1.9 billion 
over the next 5 years, and of that amount, $764 million would go into 
counteradvertising to reach young people about the effects of smoking.
  The need for this legislation has been made even clear by the Surgeon 
General's report this morning. Since we offered our amendment last 
fall, the tobacco companies and their slick promoters have come up with 
a new gimmick that is sure to entice more of our children to smoke.
  They have started what I have called the merchandise clubs in which 
you get cash to buy all sorts of gifts simply by buying cigarettes.
  Let me show you what your tax dollars are paying for in this 
advertising. First of all, Mr. President, we have to say hello again to 
our old friend Joe Camel. Joe Camel, of course, is very cool. And now 
what Joe Camel has is these clubs, and he has C notes. And if you smoke 
a certain number of cigarettes, you get C notes. And when you get the C 
notes, of course, then you can trade them in for gifts.
  Mr. President, if you do not happen to recognize Joe Camel, I can 
assure you are in a distinct minority. If you do not recognize Joe 
Camel, ask your kids because your kids recognize Joe Camel.
  In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical 
Association, more 6-year-old kids can identify old Joe Camel than 
adults. In fact, just as many kids can recognize old Joe Camel as they 
can Mickey Mouse. And his name recognition has really paid off. In the 
3 years since the introduction of old Joe, sales of Camel cigarettes to 
children under 18 went from $6 million to $476 million per year. So the 
kids know old Joe. He is around.
  Well, now he has the Camel cash catalog. Here is his brochure. Here 
is the latest one right here. It is the official Camel Cash Catalog, 
volume 4. I got this one out of Rolling Stone magazine, of course, 
which is targeted to young people. What old Joe Camel says is this. You 
smoke cigarettes, you get C notes, and you get 2 C notes on each pack 
of new Special Lights, and with these C notes of course you can buy all 
kinds of gifts--key rings, wrist watches, sweatshirts, beach bags and 
sunglasses. Well, you name it. You can buy all kinds of things with Joe 
Camel's C notes.
  Let me just tell you what it means. See, if you are smooth enough as 
Joe Camel says, if you have 175 C notes, you can get a fish and game 
club camouflaged thermos for 175 C notes. That means you only have to 
smoke 3,500 Camel cigarettes and then you can get that. At around $1.90 
a pack, that is $332.50 for the thermos. It looks like a GI Joe 
thermos. You can get a cigarette lighter. For a cigarette lighter you 
have to smoke 400 cigarettes.
  For young women who have not been able to identify with old Joe 
Camel, we have a new character now. We have Josephine. It is not old 
Josephine. It is young Josephine. So when you look in the Camel ads, 
there is old Joe Camel and there is his female counterpart.
  Mr. President, I thought this ad was particularly striking. It is a 
promotion for Camels. You have old Joe Camel in there, and you have 
Josephine. It is a great big place with a lot of young people in there 
socializing, shooting a little pool. They are talking. There is a band 
playing over here. This is a band playing, and young people are 
dancing. Just about everyone has a cigarette in their hand. All the 
men, and all the women have cigarettes in their hands. But there is no 
smoke in there. I find that fascinating; that you can have probably 
about 100 people in a nightclub all smoking cigarettes and there is 
absolutely no smoke. So maybe this is the answer to our ozone problem 
in America. If everyone smokes, they will clean up the air.
  Well, this is the kind of advertising that Camels are doing with old 
Joe cigarettes, to get young people hooked. It is cool. You can 
socialize. You are part of the crowd if only you smoke old Joe Camel 
cigarettes. If that is not enough, you get the C notes, and here is 
volume 2. You can just buy all kinds of nice things with the C notes 
from Joe Camel cigarettes.
  I do not mean to pick just on old Joe Camel. He has some partners in 
this. Let us look at the Marlboro Adventure Team. If you do not happen 
to like old Joe Camels, you can smoke Marlboros. They have an official 
gear catalog. You can be a part of the Marlboro Adventure Team . What 
they do is they have miles. You go so many miles. If you go the 
distance, they say, you get all of these things. You can turn them in. 
You can buy all kinds of gear from your Marlboro Adventure Team .
  Then, again for women, if you do not like Marlboro, they have 
Virginia Slims. The Virginia Slims, they have a new clothing that you 
can wear. They call it a ``* * * fashion collection with a street-wise 
attitude'' from Virginia Slims. So for 225 of these certificates you 
get from smoking Virginia Slims, you can get a top-of-the-line leather 
backpack. Most kids have backpacks that they take to school. All you 
have to do is smoke 4,500 Virginia Slim cigarettes, send in your little 
seals that come on the package. That is about $427.50 for the 
cigarettes. Then you can get a nice leather backpack that you can take 
to school.
  So this is the kind of advertising that is going on. This is exactly 
what the Surgeon General's report talks about on page 8. I will read 
from that. The Surgeon General says, ``Since reports from adolescents 
who begin to smoke indicate they have lower self-esteem and lower self-
image than their nonsmoking peers, smoking can become a self-
enhancement mechanism. The positive functions that many young people 
attribute to smoking are the same functions advanced in most cigarette 
advertising.''
  That is what the Surgeon General's report says. Let me read that 
again. ``The positive functions that many young people attribute to 
smoking are the same functions advanced in most cigarette 
advertising''--socializing, having fun, outdoor activities.
  ``Young people are a strategically important market for the tobacco 
industry,'' says the Surgeon General. ``Since most smokers try their 
first cigarettes before age 18, young people are the chief source of 
new consumers for the tobacco industry which each year must replace the 
many consumers who quit smoking,'' and of course the many who die from 
smoking-related related diseases.
  The Surgeon General's report goes on to say, ``Cigarette advertising 
frequently use human models for human-like cartoon characters to 
display images of youthful activities; independence, helpfulness, and 
adventure seeking. In presenting attractive images of smokers, 
cigarette advertisements appear to stimulate some adolescents who have 
relatively low self-images to adopt smoking as a way to approve their 
own self-image.''
  Mr. President, these advertising campaigns are outrageous. They even 
violate the industry's own cigarette advertising code. The cigarette 
advertising code said, ``well, we don't need to be regulated. We will 
adopt our own code.'' They adopted a code, and their own code says 
that, ``Cigarette advertising shall not represent that cigarette 
smoking is essential to social prominence, distinction, success or 
sexual attraction.''
  Here it is right here, the tobacco industry's voluntary cigarette 
advertising code: ``* * * shall not represent that cigarette smoking is 
essential to social prominence or sexual attraction.''
  ``Cigarette advertising shall not depict as a smoker any person 
participating in, or obviously having just participated in, physical 
activity requiring stamina or athletic conditioning beyond that of 
normal recreation.''
  So what are we to make of the Marlboro Adventure Team? We are here 
today to say to the tobacco companies that it is time to call a halt to 
this. These ads make a great case for our amendment, and the Surgeon 
General's report I think really tops it off.
  These campaigns of old Joe Camel are all part of over $10 million a 
day, $4 billion a year, that tobacco companies put into pushing their 
product. And you and I are helping to subsidize them because it is all 
tax deductible. At a time when the Government is spending $114 million 
a year to stop people from smoking, the American taxpayers are 
providing a $1 billion-a-year subsidy to promote smoking, especially 
among young people.
  So today, along with the Surgeon General's report, we should call 
upon the cigarette companies to cease and desist with these promotions. 
We should pass this legislation to take away the tax deductibility of 
advertising for smoking. Every day that we fail to act another 3,000 of 
our children start smoking. Every day we fail to act 1,200 more people 
die of smoking-related illnesses. And every day we fail to act, over 
$200 million in decreased productivity is lost in our economy due to 
smoking.
  So it is time to say goodbye to Joe Camel. It is time to get over the 
Marlboro Adventure Team. What we really need is some truth-in-
advertising, Mr. President. These are the kind of ads that I would be 
running.
  There was one run by the St. Louis Area Cancer Coalition sponsored by 
the American Lung Association. On the left you see a very attractive 
young female. On the right you see that same female with a lot of 
wrinkles, and aging marks.
  The ad says, ``I started smoking to look older. It worked.'' If we 
saw more ads like that in Rolling Stone Magazine and in the 
publications that go out, maybe we would send a clearer message to 
young people--that smoking is not necessary for social prominence, it 
certainly is not healthy, and this is what it is going to do to you.
  I say the best way to get to that point is take away the tax 
deductibility for advertising for tobacco, and maybe we will not see 
Joe Tobacco around anymore. I think the Surgeon General in the 23d 
report has focused on this issue for the first time, on smoking and 
youth and what it means to young people to have these advertisements 
out there and how it hooks them on smoking. It is time to call a halt 
to it. It is time to make sure our young people get the facts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ford). The Senator's time has expired.

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