[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 49 (Tuesday, April 28, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2377-H2378]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  INTRODUCTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL TOBACCO RESPONSIBILITY ACT OF 1998

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the International 
Tobacco Responsibility Act of 1998, a bill to adopt a truly responsible 
policy on nicotine addiction.
  With the recent forced disclosure of documents, we have learned, in 
the words of the tobacco companies themselves, the treachery they have 
engaged in in targeting America's children. Less well-known is the 
activity they have had around the world to addict the children of other 
countries.
  Since 1990, while Philip Morris sales have risen by a little less 
than 5 percent here in the United States, they have grown by more than 
80 percent abroad. Only last Thursday RJR Nabisco posted some bad news: 
They had about an 11 percent drop in their tobacco earnings. But the 
news was not all bleak. As the New York Times reported, the analysts 
said that the company's tobacco sales grew impressively in some areas 
like Romania, where they more than doubled. The analysts noted there 
was extremely good volume in market share growth in Eastern Europe and 
Russia.
  The big tobacco companies that disavowed the settlement now, 
originally, when they entered that settlement, they knew they could pay 
any penalties they owed for what they did to our children by going and 
addicting children in someone else's backyard. I think that is wrong. 
If America is to be called a world leader, it must also lead in the 
battle to save the lives of young people around this planet.
  Last year, this Congress took some constructive action when it 
adopted an amendment that I authored to an appropriations bill to stop 
the American taxpayer from having to be an unwilling accomplice in 
promoting the activities of these tobacco companies abroad by involving 
improperly, I think, and now it is against the law, the Trade 
Representative's office and our various consulates around the world.

                              {time}  1800

  Now we need to address this problem in a much more comprehensive way. 
And that is what this legislation does, recognizing that every year 
tobacco-related diseases kill 3 million people in this world, and if 
the trends continue, it is estimated that in the next 25 years we will 
be up to a level of 10 million deaths a year as a result of tobacco.
  This legislation that I have introduced for myself and for a number 
of our colleagues in a bipartisan effort addresses five major areas. 
First, we seek to establish a worldwide code of conduct for U.S. 
tobacco companies. We basically are saying, do not market tobacco to 
children anywhere, and alert consumers to the dangers of your product 
everywhere. The Marlboro man has hardly vanished. He has just taken a 
trip around the world to a school or a youth-oriented magazine in 
someone else's country.
  Last August, at the very time these high-paid, high-powered tobacco 
lobbyists were trooping around the Capitol asking us to endorse the 
settlement, one of these tobacco companies provided all-expense-paid 
vacations to Miami Beach for Latin-American reporters so that they 
could hear company representatives announce that restrictions on 
smoking and advertising were scientifically unsound. That is the kind 
of hypocrisy that we are dealing with. Two decades ago, the United 
States set a higher ethical standard with regard to bribery. We can do 
the same thing with regard to tobacco.
  The second part of this bill is to strengthen last year's prohibition 
on our Government promoting tobacco abroad.
  The third is to recognize that public health advocates around the 
world lack the resources to combat the very seductive practices 
perfected in addicting our children of these United States tobacco 
companies. And so it sets aside some revenues from any settlement to 
help establish an American Center on Global Health and Tobacco and to 
help fund efforts through the Department of Health and Human Services 
to discourage tobacco use worldwide.
  A fourth issue is to address the matter of cigarette smuggling which 
is already going on and actually helps some of these companies open up 
new markets.
  And finally, we encourage the involvement of the United States in an 
International Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This convention 
would be similar to the international campaign to ban land mines, 
because we have a real mine here threatening the future of the children 
of this world. For our Government to allow companies to pay their debts 
at home by hooking children abroad to nicotine addiction and pushing 
them down the path to cancer, heart disease and emphysema would be an 
unprecedented act of hypocrisy.
  After so much talk about a global tobacco settlement, it is time to 
pass

[[Page H2378]]

truly global legislation that will establish a responsible United 
States policy for addressing our country's long complicity in the 
export of death and disease.

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