[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 95 (Tuesday, July 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H4841]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    INTRODUCTION OF INTERNATIONAL TOBACCO RESPONSIBILITY ACT OF 1997

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett] is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, this week I am introducing the 
International Tobacco Responsibility Act. To some, this title will 
itself appear contradictory, for clearly the tobacco lobby has never 
been known to accept responsibility for the death and disease that its 
products cause. But now, under the terms of the proposed tobacco 
settlement, American companies have agreed to impose more meaningful 
labeling and warning requirements on their products and on their 
advertisements. Under this settlement's terms, for the first time 
cigarette packs will carry warnings such as ``Smoking Kills,'' which it 
obviously does; ``Smoking is Addictive''; and ``Smoking Causes Cancer, 
Heart Disease and Emphysema.'' Yet while the settlement requires these 
warnings on tobacco sold here at home, it makes no effort to curb the 
export of death.
  As noted in a recent front page article in the New York Times 
entitled ``Fenced in at Home, Marlboro Man Looks Abroad'':

       If there is a heaven for beleaguered cigarette 
     manufacturers of the West, it is the developing markets of 
     eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East, half a world away 
     from . . . assertive regulators. . . .

                              {time}  1245

  Indeed, in agreeing to settle the lawsuits brought against them here 
in America, the corporate nicotine dealers made sure that they retained 
full authority to promote a nicotine fix that hooks kids around the 
world with their deadly products, and they are doing that just as fast 
as they can.
  Since 1990, Philip Morris, for example, has had its sales go up by 
4.7 percent here in the United States but abroad, it has grown 80 
percent. The world's children, the children are the newest target of 
Big Tobacco's continued addiction itself to making money at the expense 
of human lives. Joe Camel and the Marlboro cowboy, they have not gone 
away; they are just taking a trip overseas where they will appear on a 
billboard next to someone else's school and on the pages of a youth-
oriented magazine in another language.
  Big Tobacco knows that it can pay any penalties that we impose in 
America with profits earned at the expense of someone else's children. 
That is wrong. If America is to call itself a world leader, it must 
also lead in the battle to save the lives of young children from 
nicotine addiction, and that leadership means more than just saving 
lives in my home State of Texas or in Ohio; it means being concerned 
about the lives of young children in Poland or in Korea.
  The tragic consequences of nicotine addiction do not know any 
national boundaries. Tobacco does not discriminate. It kills people 
regardless of race, creed, color or national origin, and American 
tobacco companies should have the responsibility to warn smokers 
everywhere across this world of the ghastly health effects of their 
products.
  The International Tobacco Act of 1997 would take three important 
steps toward addressing this worldwide health menace.
  First, it would require that American tobacco companies apply the 
same warning labels to their products sold overseas and their 
advertisements as they are required to do in the United States. While 
current United States law requires labels on domestic cigarette packs, 
it specifically exempts exported cigarettes. This bill would repeal 
that loophole and require labels on tobacco products produced here or 
wherever their ultimate destination.
  Second, the International Tobacco Responsibility Act would prohibit 
the existing subsidy, yes subsidy, by American taxpayers for promoting 
overseas tobacco sales. Too often in the past Federal officials in our 
own Government have been accomplices to exporting death and disease 
throughout the world. Employees of our Government, paid with our tax 
money, have promoted tobacco abroad and brought down advertising 
restrictions in other countries that were designed to prevent addicting 
children and others overseas from the very way that they have been 
exploited here at home.
  Third, the International Tobacco Responsibility Act would call on the 
United States of America to exercise some moral leadership on this 
vital issue. If we can achieve an international accord to restrict the 
trade in ivory to protect elephant herds around the world, surely we 
can seek accords to restrict the marketing of lethal tobacco products 
to the world's children.
  This bill would urge the President to seek, through the United 
Nations, an international conference to implement measures such as 
those in the proposed settlement agreement to reduce nicotine 
consumption worldwide. In Japan, one warning label modestly suggests 
``let us carefully observe smoking manners.'' Clearly it would be the 
ultimate hypocrisy to continue to promote death abroad at the same time 
we address the needs of our own children here at home.
  As we move toward consideration of the proposed tobacco settlement, 
we must not default on our obligation as a world leader. We should 
seize this unique opportunity to act responsibly ourselves, while 
seeking concerted international action to limit trafficking in a highly 
addictive drug that kills more people worldwide than any other.

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