[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 44 (Tuesday, April 21, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2088-H2094]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE TOBACCO AGREEMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to talk about the tobacco 
agreement, which of course has been much in the news lately, 
particularly during the last 2 weeks when Congress was not in session.
  As everyone knows I think by now, during the congressional recess the 
tobacco companies pulled out of the agreement and have essentially 
refused to do any future negotiation at this point on the agreement. 
And I think the reason they did that is because they did not like the 
looks of what was developing here in Congress, and basically have 
declared war on all legislation that does not have their blessing.
  In his April 8 announcement that his company was pulling out of the 
agreement, RJR Nabisco CEO Stephen F. Goldstone declared, and I quote, 
that the legislative process as far as tobacco is concerned is broken 
beyond repair.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I think this declaration is wrong and it is also 
rather arrogant. Congress does not need and I do not believe will wait 
for the tobacco industry to pass legislation to protect our children. 
Even the Republicans I think would agree with me on that.
  But what the Republicans cannot agree on and I am particularly 
talking about the Republican leadership, is what form tobacco 
legislation should take here in Congress, and particularly in the 
House. Big tobacco dollars have produced a fissure in the Republican 
Party on how to approach tobacco legislation.
  Senator John McCain, as I think many of us know, authored legislation 
that was approved recently by the Senate Commerce Committee by a 19 to 
1 vote, very lopsided. The Senator's bill, while not as strong as 
measures that are being pushed by Democrats here in the House and also 
in the Senate, is at least a step in the right direction, and I want to 
commend him for that.
  Among other things his bill generates $516 billion from the tobacco 
industry over 25 years, and it would raise the price of cigarettes by 
$1.10 over 5 years, strengthen Federal regulation of tobacco products, 
and impose penalties on the tobacco companies if teen smoking rates do 
not decline in the coming years. And this is bitterly, this legislation 
by Senator McCain is bitterly opposed by the tobacco industry, and 
after a lot of twisting, turning and flip-flopping has also been now 
opposed by Speaker Gingrich as well.

                              {time}  2000

  Yesterday's New York Times, I thought, was very interesting in 
recounting Speaker Gingrich's history on tobacco since the GOP took 
control of the House of Representatives in 1994. The Speaker's comments 
on tobacco reported in the Times, the Times said in its editorial that 
the Speaker has been ``a model of inconsistency.''
  I just want to read from the article that was in the New York Times, 
because I think it clearly illustrates whose side Speaker Gingrich is 
on.
  ``Shortly after Republicans won control of Congress in 1994,'' the 
article says, ``Mr. Gingrich announced that his party would end an 
investigation of the tobacco industry that had begun under the 
Democrats. Mr. Gingrich called David A. Kessler, then Commissioner of 
the Food and Drug Administration and the leading spokesman of the 
antismoking forces, a thug and a bully.'' This is what the Speaker said 
about Mr. Kessler.
  I would like to point out that since that time, a steady stream of 
documents concerning the marketing of cigarettes towards children and 
the deliberate manipulation of nicotine have been flowing from the 
tobacco industry. The recent release of 39,000 documents in the 
Minnesota case will surely bring more disturbing revelations.
  A lot of this has come up in the Committee on Commerce that I am a 
member of, and it has been reported on a bipartisan basis. So the 
notion that Mr. Kessler was wrong in being critical of the tobacco 
industry, I think, now has been totally repudiated. Clearly, Mr. 
Kessler was right, and there is no question that the industry was 
targeting children and deliberately manipulating both its marketing as 
well as the statements it was making about nicotine and the negative 
aspects of nicotine.
  Continuing again in yesterday's New York Times article, it reports 
that early this year, after a 2-day Republican Party retreat, Mr. 
Gingrich would say nothing about his position on tobacco legislation 
except that reducing teenage smoking was important and that lawmakers 
needed to be careful to avoid a contraband market in cigarettes. But a 
few weeks later, Mr. Gingrich said there was no sentiment for in any 
way eliciting favorably to the tobacco companies.
  Then, as we go on with Mr. Gingrich's flip-flopping and changing his 
position, in a speech to the American Medical Association about a month 
ago, this was before our Congressional recess, he called for tough and 
sweeping tobacco legislation. In March, the Washington Post reported 
that Mr. Gingrich had warned tobacco lobbyists that he would not allow 
Democrats ``to get to the left of me on tobacco legislation.''
  Now, of course, this past weekend, most recently, the Speaker 
completely

[[Page H2089]]

reversed himself again. In words that could have been scripted by the 
tobacco companies themselves, Mr. Gingrich stated that the McCain bill 
was ``a very liberal, big government, big bureaucracy bill.''
  Mr. Gingrich, who apparently is unaware that the bill was approved by 
the Senate Committee on Commerce by a 19 to 1 vote, also commented that 
the bill would be very hard to get through Congress.
  Well, the only reason it is going to be very hard to get through 
Congress is because he and the other Republicans in the leadership will 
not allow it to get through, because, obviously, the Members on the 
Senate Commerce Committee overwhelmingly voted for the bill.
  I yield to my colleague from Texas (Mr. Doggett). I would like to 
point out that my colleague has been in the forefront on this issue, 
particularly with regard to the all-important issue of not allowing the 
tobacco companies to start marketing overseas to children.
  I am very afraid, as I know the gentleman is, that even when we pass 
legislation to stop teenage smoking or cut back on it, that if we do 
not do something in that legislation about marketing overseas, they 
will simply expand their operations overseas. I want to commend the 
gentleman.
  Mr. DOGGETT. That is a concern. They wanted to give Joe Camel a 
passport. They have already given him one really and taken him around 
to addict other people's children on nicotine, just as these nicotine 
peddlers have addicted our children in too many cases across America.
  I would reflect on some of the points the gentleman just made. I 
think this is important to put this in an important historical setting, 
and to recognize that experts that we turn to now, experts that were 
appointed, indeed, by Republican Presidents like Mr. Kessler, Dr. 
Kessler, in fact, now up at Yale, we turned to him for expertise on 
these subjects. A person that Speaker Gingrich labeled a thug; as you 
referenced, the kind of rhetoric that unfortunately has too often 
characterized debates in this House.
  To now suggest, and I read the same article about his comments, that 
the approach that the Republicans, I believe all of the Republicans on 
the Senate Committee on Commerce endorsed, was too liberal, is an 
indication of how really extreme and controlled by the tobacco lobby 
the leadership of this House is.
  I know the gentleman from New Jersey shares my view that what we need 
with reference to tobacco is a genuinely conservative approach. We need 
to place the emphasis on conserving the health of our children, and the 
rejection of what is really a fairly modest step by the Senate 
Committee on Commerce, a step that leaves many deficiencies, as has 
been pointed out with reference to international tobacco, with 
reference to many other issues.
  I think the House could improve on the steps that are important, but 
lacking, that Senator McCain has taken, to simply condemn them and the 
work of Republicans and Democrats alike as too liberal, and say we need 
a conservative approach. While I agree with the conservative part, but 
the only thing liberal I have seen in this bill is the way the tobacco 
companies have liberally circulated campaign contributions all around 
this Capitol.
  In fact, the gentleman from New Jersey will remember when I first got 
here, we had Republican leadership people passing out checks from the 
tobacco companies right here on this floor in such a grievous offense 
of the dignity of this House that they had to finally come back and 
pass a rule to keep themselves from doing this kind of errand running 
for the tobacco industry.
  So I think that as important as it is to ask the tobacco companies to 
voluntarily restrict their advertising, so much of this is linked to 
the campaign finance problems that the gentleman from New Jersey and I 
have worked on also, and knowing that if the tobacco companies would 
voluntarily restrict their campaign contributions, we probably would 
not need to be here tonight. We would not have 3,000 children tomorrow 
in America becoming addicted to nicotine because of the failure to act 
on restrictions with regard to tobacco. Rather, we could be moving on 
to other issues.
  Does not the gentleman from New Jersey, indeed, feel that this whole 
issue of tobacco is just another part of our effort to put families and 
children first in America like with child care and education? That this 
is a leading public health menace to our children, and that that is the 
center of this debate, rather than putting these labels on it?

  Mr. PALLONE. I absolutely agree. Not that we like to throw around 
statistics, but there were some very good statistics that were put out 
by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids about tobacco use among youth. If 
I could just mention them to give us an idea, right now, this is a very 
detailed survey they did that showed that 4.1 million kids age 12 to 17 
are current smokers, and that smoking among high school seniors is at a 
19-year high, 36.9 percent.
  Since 1991, past-month smoking has increased by 35 percent among 
eighth graders and 43 percent among tenth graders. Basically, more than 
5 million children under the age of 18 alive today will die from 
smoking-related disease unless current rates are reversed.
  This is an epidemic getting bigger. I think a lot of people think 
youth smoking has gone down. It hasn't. It has actually increased.
  Not too much more here, but 45 percent of white high school boys 
report past-month use of tobacco; 20 percent of boys in grades 9 
through 12 report past-month smokeless tobacco. Smoking by African-
American high school boys increased from 14.1 percent in 1991 to 27.8 
percent in 1995. Of course, we know that almost 90 percent of adult 
smokers begin at or before age 18. So if they start before they are 18, 
then they are basically the smokers who become the adult smokers of 
tomorrow. So this is something that has to be addressed.
  Mr. DOGGETT. I know the gentleman is aware, after years of denying, I 
think really flat out lying about their attempts to hook children, we 
now know through the documents that the judges are forcing these 
tobacco companies to reveal to the public, after they get every big 
bucks lawyer in the country to go to every court of appeal and do 
everything they can to keep those documents secret, the documents are 
finally becoming to come out to show, as we found out in the State of 
Texas, they are targeting kids in elementary school to try to find out 
what would be the most effective way to hook them to nicotine. And once 
hooked, like to any other dangerous lethal drugs, many of these 
children are unable to leave the nicotine habit, and that has a 
tremendous effect on, really, as the gentleman described it, a public 
health epidemic in this country.
  Mr. PALLONE. There is also a direct relationship between the amount 
of advertising that the company does and the percentage of the youth 
market that they end up with. Again, from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free 
Kids, 86 percent of kids who smoke prefer Marlboro, Camel and Newport, 
which are the three most heavily advertised brands, and Marlboro, the 
most heavily advertised, constitutes almost 60 percent of the youth 
market, but about 25 percent of the adult market.
  So there is no question that this advertising is causing kids to 
smoke, and that there is a direct benefit from the advertising.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Well, I think we know the tobacco companies would not be 
throwing their money away on advertising if it did not work to bring in 
more smokers, young smokers, to take the place of the many Americans 
who have died prematurely from smoking-related diseases of many types.
  Just as the tobacco companies know that their campaign contributions 
are not being wasted, they would not be making these campaign 
contributions frivolously. I am sure in your history you were giving to 
put in perspective this now refusal to move forward in the House on 
reasonable public health measures to protect our children, you are 
probably going to cover what happened just last year when two tobacco 
companies were the Number 1 and the Number 2 soft money contributors to 
the Republican Party, and then right after they set their record of 
contributions, the next month, along comes this secret $50 billion tax 
break.
  We, in a way, have already begun to take up the tobacco settlement 
issues. It is just that Speaker Gingrich and the Republican leadership 
thought the

[[Page H2090]]

first issue that ought to come up was not protecting our children, but 
protecting the tobacco companies by giving them a $50 billion tax 
break, which when it became public, they were so ashamed of, they snuck 
out here and repealed it last year, as you will recall.
  Mr. PALLONE. One of the biggest concerns I have, and, again, I 
started tonight as you did saying at least Senator McCain is moving in 
the right direction, but the liability issue is a great concern. If you 
look at the original proposal that the tobacco companies put forward, 
they had basically eliminated most of their liability.
  The McCain bill doesn't go far enough, I think, and is still 
basically excluding them from a lot of liability. I am very concerned 
about a settlement that goes too far in that direction.
  Mr. DOGGETT. I certainly share that concern. I believe that is one of 
the areas that we could make significant improvements on the work that 
the bipartisan group there in the Senate has begun. They have begun the 
work; they have moved in the right direction, but they haven't done 
quite enough to protect the public health of our children.
  To say to an industry in this country, of all the industries that we 
could turn to and give some kind of special protection and say we won't 
hold them accountable, we will not hold them personally responsible for 
their deviousness, for their criminal misconduct, to say that, as is 
suggested by this limitation on their civil liability for these 
malicious acts that they have engaged in, would be to reward them for 
decades of abuse in creating the largest cause of preventible death in 
America today. And what would that say to other industries? That the 
worse you are, the more legal protection the Congress of the United 
States is going to give out?
  I think it would be a signal far beyond this tobacco industry's 
misconduct that could have untold consequences in other areas of our 
life here in America.
  Mr. PALLONE. The gentleman has already said it, but to repeat it 
again, clearly what happened here politically is that Senator McCain, 
who is a Republican, put forth a real effort to try to move something 
that he felt could be adopted in the Senate and ultimately in the 
House, too, I think, on a bipartisan basis. That happened, of course, 
just before our recess.
  The Speaker, Speaker Gingrich, obviously was very scared by that, 
because it showed that there was support within his own party for 
moving legislation that the tobacco industry did not want. So I think 
what we saw last weekend was his effort to say, look, tobacco, I am not 
going to let this happen. I am going to put a stop to it. You keep 
having that money flow to us, and this Republican Party is not going to 
allow this type of legislation to move forward.
  That is what we face now, and I think that is what we are going to 
face for the rest of the year from this Republican leadership, unless 
we force their hand.
  Mr. DOGGETT. I think that is right. He affirmed the same viewpoint to 
reflect back on his early tenure in the office of Speaker that the 
gentleman referred to out of the article at the beginning of his 
remarks, when he put a stop. We could have been moving on this and 
obtained some of this information months ago. Thousands of deaths ago 
we could have acted on this measure. But the Speaker put a stop to the 
investigation that was going on in the House Committee on Commerce of 
the misconduct of the tobacco industry.
  Had it not been for vigorous action in the private sector to point 
out the abuse and misconduct of the tobacco industry, we would not be 
to this point.

                              {time}  2015

  Now it is a question of whether the Speaker can be a continued 
roadblock. He has been successful. I will have to give him credit where 
credit is due. He has managed to destroy thus far our efforts to reform 
the campaign finance system, blocking it in a most devious form. But 
whether the American people will tolerate that remains to be seen. We 
have our discharge petition moving along on campaign finance.
  Now to add to that insult further injury by permitting the Republican 
leadership to block us from moving forward to deal with the problems 
that our young people face here and abroad with reference to nicotine 
addiction would be a terrible wrong. I think it is a wrong clearly that 
that overwhelming vote in the Senate Committee on Commerce indicates 
that Members, Republican and Democrat in that body, will not tolerate.
  I think if the American people hear about this enough, they are going 
to be speaking about it to their Members, Republican and Democrat 
alike, saying, you cannot go home without addressing the number one 
public health epidemic in America today for our young people, and that 
is nicotine addiction, and the fact that 3,000 new addicts will be 
added to the rolls every day until we are able to address this problem 
of youth smoking.
  Mr. PALLONE. I agree. I wanted to point out, and I do not know that 
it needs to be pointed out, but as the gentleman knows because he has 
been at the meetings, the Democratic Caucus has put forward 
legislation. We spent about 6 months, I think, having our own hearings 
and meeting with people in our tobacco working group that the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Vic Fazio), the chairman of our Democratic Caucus, 
put together, and both the gentleman and I were at many of those 
meetings.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Fazio) has introduced legislation, 
with a lot of cosponsors on the Democratic side, and I know I am one of 
the cosponsors, that does not include any liability caps for the 
tobacco industry. It is called the Healthy Kids Act.
  The legislation also calls for higher cigarette prices than the 
McCain bill, and of course one aspect of that that the gentleman and I 
have talked about a lot is some kind of limitation on the international 
activity of tobacco companies.
  The Healthy Kids Act, the Democratic bill, includes a ban on the 
promotion of U.S. tobacco products abroad, and it would also require 
warning labels on all exported tobacco products, and fully fund 
international tobacco control efforts.
  I cannot emphasize how important I consider control of international 
tobacco operations to be. I know the gentleman has introduced 
legislation specifically on that subject that I have cosponsored. Maybe 
if I could talk a little about that.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I will be expanding on this legislation 
this next week with a revision, including some of the provisions that 
have been incorporated in the Senate Committee on Commerce, but 
recognizing that when the tobacco companies go abroad to try to pay the 
penalties that they have incurred here at home, that it is just wrong 
for us as Americans to be projecting forth the idea that there is 
something American about smoking.
  We see some of these billboards up in foreign countries suggesting 
that the western, democratic thing to do is to smoke. We see at 
schools, at kiosks, at clubs, we see, as the gentleman and I have been 
in some parts of the world, young people who look like they are barely 
old enough to go to elementary school passing out free cigarettes on 
the streets; using cigarette logos on toys, on toy cars in Buenos 
Aires; on arcade games in the Philippines; Marlboro labels on various 
kinds of children's clothes.
  Those are the kinds of things that makes it pretty clear that they 
are targeting young people in these other countries, recognizing that 
many of the other countries do not even have the feeble limitations on 
tobacco that have existed in this country.
  We now have literally a worldwide health epidemic with nicotine 
addiction, and I hope to expand on the action that the House considered 
last year, the legislation that I introduced with the gentleman's help, 
in addressing in a more broad form the steps we could take to reduce 
this worldwide epidemic, and project our role as a superpower, frankly, 
in a very positive way to try to improve world health.
  Mr. PALLONE. I want to commend the gentleman again for his efforts in 
that regard, because I know the gentleman was really the first person 
out there in the House, and probably in the whole Congress, to pay 
attention to the issue.
  The amazing thing about it is that it is very easy for these tobacco 
companies to expand now into areas of the world that were not 
previously open to them because of the changes that are taking place: 
the demise of the Soviet

[[Page H2091]]

Union and the countries, the former Soviet Republics, the eastern 
European countries that were under Russian Communist domination.
  That is where the industry has targeted, because previously those 
governments controlled what happened more. It was a totalitarian 
society, and it was not possible for American companies to market 
tobacco. Now those countries have opened up, and they have not been 
prepared for the onslaught, if you will, of the tobacco industry.
  It is particularly in those countries that we see this, and in others 
as well; India, for example. India was a very controlled economy until 
about 5 years ago. Now with a move towards market reforms, 
privatization, again, they have moved in there, because it was a 
previously controlled economy that is now open. So there are tremendous 
opportunities, and a lot of these countries just are not able. They 
have meager resources; they have fragile democracies, in some of the 
cases of the former Soviet Republics.
  I was very shocked, because a couple of years ago I went to Armenia, 
which is a former Soviet Republic. I went into some of the poorest 
housing that was actually set up for refugees from the war in Karabakh, 
and the people had absolutely nothing. And what I would see on the 
walls were Marlborough posters, and the kids smoking. They had nothing, 
and they were smoking.
  This is the insidious aspect of it, to go to these places that do not 
have the ability, really, to prevent or control or regulate any of 
this. That is what I think we are seeing. It is very tragic.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Of course, I am familiar with the gentleman's leadership 
role on behalf of Armenia and Armenian Americans, and I am sure the 
gentleman has found it troubling, as he has traveled there and in some 
of these other former Soviet countries, that it is not only the opening 
up of the country economically, but there is a sense on a cultural 
level that there is something about smoking that connotes freedom in 
the western philosophy, western openness.
  The tobacco companies, and I met recently with a medical director 
from a health unit in Moscow, apparently are using billboards to really 
take advantage of this whole idea that there is something western, 
there is something free and democratic about smoking. That is not the 
kind of America that I want to project to these countries as we 
hopefully see them turning around to a western style of open economy 
and open government. Rather, we should be projecting our best.

  But I think all of our concern about the international aspect does 
come right back to this room. Was there not also some comment within 
the last few days questioning whether Joe Camel was somehow even 
related to attempts to addict children?
  Mr. PALLONE. I do not think there was any question about that. I do 
not know the details about what the gentleman is discussing, but there 
is no question in my mind about that.
  Mr. DOGGETT. That the whole effort was targeted towards children?
  Mr. PALLONE. No question, if we look at it. And I am very afraid that 
now that they have dropped the Joe Camel ads, that the new ads, I am 
sure the gentleman has seen some of these new Camel ads with the very 
bright colors and the psychedelic images. There is no question in my 
mind that those new ads are targeted to children as well, so this is a 
very difficult thing. We are challenging an industry that has the 
resources to do multi-million dollar campaigns to find out what works 
with kids, and maybe not even make it obvious to adults about what 
works with kids.
  I know that even those new Camel ads, with all the different colors, 
and I cannot even describe them exactly, but there is no question that 
those appeal to children as well.
  Mr. DOGGETT. I think that is why we need to address the issue of 
advertising directed to young people. They are susceptible to the many 
subliminal messages, the many direct messages in this advertising. I 
believe that one key part of the action that we need to take addresses 
advertising.
  I know that there has been some feeling that there needed to be 
agreement on the part of the tobacco industry, and certainly that would 
be better on the advertising front in particular. But does not the 
gentleman agree that our responsibility as Members of Congress is not 
to ask what would be best for the tobacco companies, or to ask whether 
this is okay by them, by RJR, but that we ought to make our priority to 
be a conservative approach, of conserving children's health first, and 
seeking out the way that we can best address children's health and its 
protection, not how we can best protect the tobacco companies that have 
caused so much harm to so many Americans and people around the world?
  Mr. PALLONE. No question about it. I would point out, and I do not 
always like to use polls, because I do not think we should be driven 
here necessarily by polls, but once again, as with so many issues that 
have been part of our Democratic agenda over this Congress, this is an 
issue that the American people strongly support. They want us to try to 
curtail youth smoking. They think it is a very important issue.
  The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids just did a recent telephone 
survey, and I am not going to get into all the details, but almost all 
the respondents, and they had a thousand adults who were randomly 
surveyed, almost all of the respondents expressed concern about tobacco 
used by kids. A large majority believed Congress should address this 
issue in the next few months, in the next 6 months.
  Also, there was tremendous support for the specifics with regard to 
cutting back on youth smoking that the President put forward in his 
tobacco proposal. He of course has not specifically said that we have 
to have a particular bill, but he has laid out guidelines for what we 
should have. That is overwhelmingly supported by the main public.
  I do not even need a poll to tell me, because I know when I have my 
town meetings and when I meet people, as we did during this last 
recess, this is a very important issue for them. There is no question 
about it.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), who, 
again, has been out there, Ms. DeLauro has been out there from the 
beginning. She has introduced legislation to address this issue that I 
have cosponsored. She has been really leading the message on this issue 
about addressing the problems of youth smoking.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. 
DeLauro).
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join with my colleagues 
tonight. I apologize for being a little bit late to join them this 
evening. But this is, I think, a critical issue for this country and 
for this Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, we have really a rather extraordinary opportunity, and I 
am sure the gentleman has talked about some of these things already, 
and I apologize for repetition. But the fact of the matter is that 
every single year cigarettes kill more Americans than AIDS, alcohol, 
car accidents, murder, suicide, illegal drugs, and fires combined. 
Three thousand kids start to smoke every day, a thousand of whom will 
die from a tobacco-related illness.
  We know that 90 percent of adult smokers began at or before the age 
of 18. We are finding this daily, every single day, with the disclosed 
documents that are now in the public purview. This is what we are 
really grateful for, because for so many years all of this data in this 
material was being held in some secret place, maybe, and thank God we 
have a court ruling that said it should see the light of day.
  Those documents prove without any doubt that the tobacco industry has 
meticulously studied our young people, pinpointed the most appealing 
way to market a product to our kids.
  Again, I do not know if this was mentioned. I was particularly struck 
by this 1984 R.J. Reynolds marketing report. For me, it says it all. It 
says that young people are the only source, and this is a quote, ``. . 
. the only source of replacement smokers,'' and that if kids ``turn 
away from smoking, the industry must decline, just as a population 
which does not give birth will eventually dwindle.''
  The gentlemen, like I do, go to schools all the time. When the 
Members look at 12-year-old youngsters, middle school kids, because 
this is the age at which our kids are the most susceptible, and that is 
where the industry has focused their $6 billion advertising

[[Page H2092]]

campaign, we really do look at these youngsters. They are healthy, they 
are bright, they are eager. They have their whole lives ahead of them.
  When we look out at that audience, we see all of these qualities 
about these young people. What we want to do is to make sure that what 
we do on our jobs provides these kids with that healthy future, with 
that ability to become adults and to be able to take care of themselves 
and their families, and to lead good lives.

                              {time}  2030

  And it is interesting to note the contrast with what an R.J. Reynolds 
or the others that have been involved, how they view the audience, the 
very same audience that we are looking at. They are 12-year-olds as 
replacement smokers.
  That is why the campaigns have been directed at this effort. And we 
do, I think, have a fundamental obligation, particularly with all the 
data, with all the information, to turn this back to focus in on 
underage smoking.
  We have a wonderful group in the Third District in Connecticut which 
I represent, which we called the Kick Butts Connecticut Campaign, and 
they are middle school kids. These wonderful youngsters have taken upon 
themselves the responsibility for talking to their classmates, for 
going into younger grades and telling the younger kids that they should 
not start to smoke and what are the dangers of smoking. So we have kind 
of got this little army of about a hundred or so young people, middle 
school kids, practicing their presentations and their skits and going 
in with the self-confidence of talking to their peers and telling them 
not to smoke.
  Not everyone will follow that, but a lot of those youngsters we hope 
will not start on this road. But the fact of the matter is that 
underage smoking is against the law. That is ultimately what it is 
about here. And we have to do two things. We have to make sure that 
this industry is not going to continue to peddle this product which is 
killing our kids. And we need to, at the same time, be able to curtail 
their activities and we also need to be educating our kids about the 
dangers of smoking.
  I will say that this RJR campaign for Camel cigarettes, which as we 
all know about features Joe Camel, the cartoon character, by 1991 the 
Journal of the American Medical Association had found out that 33 
percent of 3-year-olds and 91 percent of 6-year-olds could match Joe 
Camel to a photo of a cigarette. Ninety-eight percent of our teens 
correctly identified the brand when shown Joe Camel ads.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, could the gentlewoman yield on that?
  Ms. DeLAURO. Certainly.
  Mr. DOGGETT. I was wondering how the gentlewoman would react to a 
statement, and we have covered many of the various outrageous 
statements that Speaker Gingrich has made on the subject, but how the 
gentlewoman would react to a statement I understand he made this month 
that in order to understand what has happened with teenage smoking, 
this is not complicated. It has nothing to do with Joe Camel. He made 
that statement, apparently.
  Ms. DeLAURO. That is right. He did make that statement.
  Mr. DOGGETT. It sounds consistent with the criticism of Dr. Kessler 
as a thug and some of the other comments he has made in the past.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is right. And he has had a 
reincarnation, which I believe has occurred primarily because I think 
they took him to the woodshed to talk to him about what they were going 
to do or not going to do in terms of financial resources, given that 
the tobacco industry is the single biggest source of funding to the 
Republican party.
  And if I am correct, I would ask my colleagues to bear me out on 
this, it is that the Speaker was responsible for putting in a $50 
billion tax break for the cigarette companies and then when that saw 
the light of day, and thank God it did, we were able to pull it back.
  But let me just mention about the gentleman's comment, because after 
Joe Camel's debut, Camel's share of smokers younger than 18 jumped from 
0.5 percent to 32.8 percent. It is representing an estimated $476 
million in revenue annually.
  So, quite frankly, if he knows this, then he is not telling it like 
it is, or he just has not done the research on the effect of Joe Camel 
and that advertising on our children.
  Mr. DOGGETT. With that kind of money at stake, it is pretty clear why 
the tobacco industry can afford to lavish such giant campaign 
contributions on this Congress. And it is also pretty clear that the 
type of addiction that is at stake here is not just the addiction of 
our young people to nicotine, but the addiction of some of the 
leadership around this place to that kind of tobacco campaign money.
  Mr. PALLONE. Well, the scary thing, of course, is not only what has 
been mentioned, but also we can be sure, I think they may have already 
announced it but even if they have not, we can be sure that in the next 
few weeks we are going to see a massive amount of money spent by the 
tobacco industry on trying to persuade the American people that 
movement on the tobacco bill is not the right thing here in this 
Congress.
  So now that they have decided to withdraw from any further 
negotiations to come to an agreement on a tobacco settlement, they are 
simply going to go out and spend millions and millions of dollars, I do 
not know how much, trying to persuade the public that we should not 
move the bill. And I worry about the impact of that.
  I still believe that the public is so disgusted because of what has 
happened and what they have seen the industry do and the documents that 
have come out over the last 6 months that they will not be swayed by 
this multimillion dollar advertising campaign, because they are going 
to certainly make their best of it. And I would hope that that 
ultimately does not sway a lot of Members of this body.
  I know that the Republican leadership is probably glad to see that 
kind of campaign begin, because this way they probably figure it is 
some way to support their position and not to have move legislation.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I think it was just a few months ago when we have seen 
this absolute flip-flop. The Speaker made a speech to the American 
Medical Association and called for, quote, tough and sweeping tobacco 
legislation. And last week, as my colleagues have said and I am saying, 
we had a bill that cleared the Senate, the Committee on Commerce in the 
Senate.
  Folks are always saying, ``Why can you not do things here in a 
bipartisan way? Why can you not get bipartisan support for legislation 
and get it passed?'' Well, my friends, that is a bipartisan piece of 
legislation that the Senate is talking about. Some of us do not think 
it goes far enough. It talks about a $1.10 addition to the cost of a 
pack of cigarettes. My bill on the House side, Senator Kennedy's bill 
on the Senate side, adds $1.50 to a pack of cigarettes and it takes 
that revenue of $20 billion a year and puts $10 billion into health 
research and $10 billion into child care.
  But nevertheless, that is a bipartisan piece of legislation here and 
we are always talking about how we cannot come together. We have an 
opportunity to come together. And yet, and I heard this with my own 
ears on Sunday on the talk shows, the Speaker attacking this proposed 
bipartisan antismoking legislation. An out-and-out attack on where 
people have come together in recognizing that we have to do something 
about underage smoking, and in addition to that, that one of the keys 
to this is the amount that is charged for a pack of cigarettes. Senator 
McCain is talking about $1.10. Some of us are talking about $1.50.

  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield, and I have 
seen that adopting the approach the gentlewoman has suggested, 
according to the Children's Defense Fund, would save almost 200,000 
lives in my State of Texas alone. And I am sure the number nationally 
runs into the millions of young people who will not meet an untimely 
death if we can discourage them from becoming nicotine addicts.
  Mr. PALLONE. And every survey has shown that if we significantly 
increase the price of a pack of cigarettes, it is going to decrease 
youth smoking. What I have seen is like a 10 percent increase in 
cigarette prices leads to like a 7 percent drop in youth smoking, so it 
is almost in direct relationship, the price

[[Page H2093]]

percentage increase versus the decrease in the percent of youth 
smoking.
  But, my colleague from Connecticut, I mean, only the very reason why 
the Speaker made these statements over the weekend is because there was 
bipartisan legislation that was moving. And it was very easy for him 
while nothing was happening to say that he wanted to move legislation 
and it was not the Republicans' fault that it was not moving. But now 
that it is moving with a Republican sponsor, he has to kill it, because 
otherwise there will be a bipartisan consensus to pass something and 
that is the last thing that Speaker Gingrich wants.
  It was the movement of the McCain bill, in my opinion, that is 
causing the Speaker to say, whoa, we do not want anything to happen 
here, and he started attacking Senator McCain's bill.
  Ms. DeLAURO. It is the last thing that his friends in the tobacco 
industry want. And, therefore, he has had this reversal of opinion. And 
it was easier to say it several months ago when this was all in the 
throes of talk. Now we are down to concrete business here. Now we have 
a piece of legislation with bipartisan support. We can move this, and 
it is sad.
  Mr. PALLONE. It is.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Because we saw this same kind of effort where we had 
bipartisan support on campaign finance reform, and we saw what happened 
on this floor in the effort to thwart a vote on real campaign finance 
reform.
  Mr. DOGGETT. And the two of course are very closely related. I think 
we received so many promises of when action would occur and when debate 
would be permitted on campaign finance. At a minimum, we ought to be 
offered--another broken promise here, it seems to me, from the 
Republican leadership--and they ought to set a firm time at which we 
could have a debate on the floor of this House with all of our Members 
present about comprehensive tobacco legislation, and let people of both 
parties and all political philosophies come forward with their ideas 
about the most comprehensive and complete way of protecting our young 
people.
  Mr. PALLONE. I was looking again at what the President has proposed, 
and of course it is not a bill but he has really come out in a pretty 
comprehensive way in trying to address the issue of youth smoking. I do 
not know if we want to review that a little, but it is very important 
that we provide legislation that really is going to have an impact.
  I think a lot of people think that: How is the Congress going to 
legislate cutting back on youth smoking? But the President has put 
forward some very specific ways to accomplish that. Of course, one has 
been mentioned by my colleague from Connecticut, about increasing the 
price of cigarettes, which is certainly a big aspect of this and will 
help a great deal. But if I could just mention a few things, it will 
only take a minute or two.
  One of the things that he would like is that the legislation should 
actually set targets to cut teen smoking by 30 percent in five years 
and 50 percent in seven years and 60 percent in 10 years, and severe 
financial penalties would be imposed that hold the tobacco companies 
accountable to meet these targets. So as we move along there is a 
certain amount of flexibility that we maybe could increase the price of 
cigarettes or do other things, this whole idea of public education and 
counter-advertising campaign, that the legislation would provide for a 
nationwide effort to essentially deglamorize tobacco.
  If I could just give an example from my own family, maybe I should 
not use it, but I do not think they will mind. But I have very young 
children, 4\1/2\, 3, and one that is only 6 months old. The only person 
that smokes in my household is my mother-in-law who comes to visit from 
time to time, and she is wonderful. She is always trying to cut back on 
her smoking and I think in the last 3 our 4 months she has not smoked 
at all.
  But when the kids first started to be aware of it they started to 
emulate her. They love her. She is a wonderful woman. And we would see 
my youngest daughter like this, going around with the cigarette. So my 
wife decided this is not good. We have to deglamorize this.
  What my mother-in-law decided to do was that whenever she smoked, she 
would go down in the basement. And the kids associated smoking with 
being in the basement and it was not a nice place to be. In a while it 
was deglamorized. After a while they would start saying, ``cigarettes 
are bad'' and ``smoking is bad.'' They started to associate it with a 
bad habit, so to speak.
  There are ways to get this across. We cannot take a defeatist 
attitude. And if we think about the President's proposals where he 
wants a public education program, also the restricted access of tobacco 
products, the kids would have a harder time buying them in terms of 
access behind the counter and that type of thing, all of these things 
can really make a difference.
  Sometimes people ask me, ``What are you going to do?'' These things 
make a difference, raising the price, making it more difficult to have 
access, and basically conducting a public education program to make 
tobacco look bad.

                              {time}  2045

  Of course, you need to do it overseas as well because you know it is 
going to expand overseas.
  Mr. DOGGETT. I think quite clearly you need to give the Food and Drug 
Administration, which deals with other kinds of harmful substances, 
lethal substances, the authority to do what it needs to do with 
reference to nicotine because it is such a deadly drug. It is 
responsible for so many lost lives.
  But I think about the personal example you gave, and I believe that 
tomorrow morning there will be so many people around America taking car 
pools, as I used to do when my daughters were a little younger, and you 
go by at any high school in America almost, and at too many middle 
schools, the smoking corner. And you see bright young people with 
tremendous potential out there and realize that what we are talking 
about here in Washington, when we talk about hundreds of thousands or 
millions of people, they are Jane and Tom and Sally and Bill that are 
down there on the corner tomorrow when you see them on the way to 
taking the kids to school, or passing by a school on the way to work. 
It is their future that is at stake here.
  The thought that tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day this 
year 3,000 young, bright people with so much potential will become 
addicted each day to nicotine, and that all of us working collectively 
here could do something about it, that is why we are here tonight 
talking. That is what is at stake, the lives of bright, creative young 
people getting misdirected in their youth on to something that stays on 
their backs forever and leads to their premature death and illness and 
destruction of them as an individual, and tremendous harm to their 
family, and limiting the potential of what they can give back to their 
community. There is just so much at stake here.
  I think we have to keep pressing Speaker Gingrich that even though he 
may have these commitments to the campaign contributors, and he may 
feel that the person who has been a public health leader should be 
called a thug, and these other kind of outrageous statements; that Joe 
Camel does not have anything to do with our young people smoking; that 
despite all that, we have no choice but to keep saying we will not take 
no for an answer; that we are demanding a full and complete debate 
about the most comprehensive bipartisan public health effort we can 
have to reduce the danger to those young people.
  Mr. PALLONE. There is no question. And I suppose another concern that 
I have, too, we have our work cut out for us, because we have the 
Republican leadership now saying that they are not going to go along 
with anything meaningful here, and we are going to have to do a lot of 
work to counteract the advertising campaign that the tobacco industry 
is going to begin soon.
  But it is also important that we not let Speaker Gingrich and the 
Republican leadership get away with some sort of cosmetic legislation 
here that really has no impact on youth smoking. We have to be very 
careful with that.
  Mr. DOGGETT. It would be consistent with what they did on campaign 
finance; coming up with some phony proposal probably written by some 
tobacco companies, and paid through their high-paid lobbyists here. 
Some kind of complete subterfuge, as they

[[Page H2094]]

tried in blocking campaign finance reform. We cannot let that happen 
with reference to the health of our children.
  Ms. DeLAURO. We are some of the luckiest people in the world. We have 
an opportunity. We have an opportunity being here, that is how I view 
what we do, to truly try to make a difference in people's lives. And we 
are given a trust mandate, if you will, from the people who send us 
here. They say, protect our interests.
  You may not be able to do everything, but we give you our trust; we 
give you our vote to take there and to protect our interests. Part of 
those interests, a substantial part of those interests are the children 
of this country, the families that we represent. And I think if we do 
not take this opportunity to try to help in some way to make a 
difference in good public policy in this country, it is there, and the 
people are there; the majority of the people are there. We should not 
be thwarted by the will of a few who are prospering and their own self-
aggrandizement is at stake rather than thinking about the interests of 
those young people that we all go to see, and we tell them how 
wonderful it is to be a Member of Congress, and all the things you can 
do as a Member of Congress. And if we do not do this, take this 
opportunity to protect our kids from smoking, the Speaker of the House 
is culpable and those that do not want to move forward on this are 
culpable. I do not believe they should go to a school again and 
represent to children that we are here to protect their interests 
because we will just have sold their interests out to the highest 
bidder. That is the danger that lies here in the next few weeks.
  Mr. DOGGETT. I know from your service on the Committee on 
Appropriations that we expend millions of taxpayer dollars to 
investigate the causes of various kinds of illnesses and diseases in 
America to try to improve health. Here is one that we know what the 
cause is. We know that nicotine addiction is the leading cause of 
preventable illness in America today.
  We do not need any more research to find that out. In fact, some of 
the most powerful research was done by the tobacco companies, hidden by 
them, hidden by them for years, but we now finally have it. And having 
that, if we cannot on this leading and most obvious cause do something 
about it, then I think we really are shirking our responsibilities.
  Mr. PALLONE. I agree. I think we are about to run out of time. I just 
want to thank both of you for participating in this special order 
tonight, and the main thing we are sending a message: The recess is 
over. We are back. We have gotten the message from Speaker Gingrich 
that he does not want to move on this tobacco settlement. We are 
sending the message back to the Republican leadership that that is not 
acceptable to us as Democrats, and that we are going to keep fighting 
and keep bringing this up until they agree to move meaningful tobacco 
legislation.
  Mr. DOGGETT. We cannot let this Congress run out of time without 
responding on the leading public health challenge our young people 
face.
  Mr. PALLONE. If that is all we accomplish this year, it will be a 
lot.

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