[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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