[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 69 (Tuesday, June 2, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5529-S5541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL TOBACCO POLICY AND YOUTH SMOKING REDUCTION ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of S. 1415, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1415) to reform and restructure the processes by 
     which tobacco products are manufactured, marketed, and 
     distributed, to prevent the use of tobacco products by 
     minors, to redress the adverse health effects of tobacco use, 
     and for other purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Pending:

       Gregg/Leahy amendment No. 2433 (to amendment No. 2420), to 
     modify the provisions relating to civil liability for tobacco 
     manufacturers.
       Gregg/Leahy amendment No. 2434 (to amendment No. 2433), in 
     the nature of a substitute.
       Gramm motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on 
     Finance with instructions to report back forthwith, with 
     Amendment No. 2436, to modify the provisions relating to 
     civil liability for tobacco manufacturers, and to eliminate 
     the marriage penalty reflected in the standard deduction and 
     to ensure the earned income credit takes into account the 
     elimination of such penalty.
       Daschle (for Durbin) amendment No. 2437 (to amendment No. 
     2436), relating to reductions in underage tobacco usage.
       Daschle (for Durbin) amendment No. 2438 (to amendment No. 
     2437), of a perfecting nature.

  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, lately we have heard a lot of hyperbole 
from the opponents of tobacco legislation, particularly regarding the 
notion that the bill should be killed because it concocts new 
bureaucracies. Last week, one Senator gave the number of 17 new 
bureaucracies and another said 30 new bureaucracies; and the Senator 
from Missouri used a very busy chart diagraming previous tobacco 
legislation which, unfortunately, did not represent the measure we are 
debating. The industry is certainly determined that this is an 
effective tool to divert the issue in trying to kill the bill.
  Interestingly, Mr. Goldstone, the CEO of RJR, has been passing out 
the outdated diagram that was manufactured by one of our colleagues, a 
development I find to be quite curious and rather discouraging. It is 
the type of thing that reinforces the public's perception about the 
relationship between the Congress and the tobacco industry. In fact, 
Mr. President, Mr. Goldstone was out in my home State of Arizona to 
speak to a local civic club and passed out this same chart to many of 
my constituents, of course, whom I do not expect to know that that 
chart was outdated when it was printed. But it is an interesting 
symbiotic relationship that is developing between the opponents of the 
bill and the tobacco industry.
  So, Mr. President, we developed a little chart here of our own. It 
does not take enormous skills--you do not have to be a genius nor be 
employed at the space agency to figure out a chart. But I thought it 
would be enlightening to my colleagues to look at a chart that has to 
do with what exactly happens when we do not pass tobacco legislation--I 
emphasize ``when we do not.''
  Of course, we begin with tobacco campaign contributions, which have

[[Page S5530]]

been $30 million since 1987 to the U.S. Congress. Now, if we stopped at 
tobacco legislation there, a result of inaction would be--the number of 
kids who are smoking is up 32.4 percent since 1991. The average young 
person smoker begins at age 13, and 90 percent of our adult smokers in 
America begin before the age of 18. That might help my colleagues 
understand better why we are trying to attack the problem of youth 
smoking.
  Adult smoking, that costs a lot of money to us who do not smoke. In 
fact, it is $50 billion a year in increased taxes on nonsmokers as well 
as smokers to pay for Medicare and Medicaid bills that are incurred as 
a direct result of treating the illnesses associated with smoking.
  Again, I think it is important to remember, 90 percent of the adults 
who smoke in America began before the age of 18. That is why the 
critical focus is on kids smoking. Ten million smoking-related deaths 
have occurred since the first Surgeon General report was issued in 
1964--10 million.
  Mr. President, I have a chart around here someplace, which I will 
show later on, which shows the relationship between tobacco-related 
illness and all other causes of death in America. Smoking-related 
deaths are by far--by far--the highest. So when my colleagues say, 
``Then you are going to move on to alcohol and hamburgers, and then you 
are going to move on to whatever,'' they may; I cannot predict the 
future; but I can argue that if you just looked at the number of 
smoking-related deaths in America, you would see that they dwarf all 
other causes themselves.
  And 430,730 deaths, or 20 percent of all deaths in America--430,700 
deaths, 20 percent of all deaths in America, are, guess what, smoking-
related deaths. Premature deaths of smokers who are under age 18, in 
1995, were 5 million. The combined potential life lost is 64 million 
years. And one-third--one-third--of all deaths by cancer in America are 
attributed to tobacco.

  Mr. President, these are not my figures; these are the Surgeon 
General's, the Centers for Disease Control's, and other Government and 
nongovernmental organizations.
  And there are 136,000 lung cancer deaths every year. There are 
136,000 lung cancer deaths every year. Mr. President, that should be 
disturbing enough. But what is more disturbing is that youth smoking is 
on the rise in America--not on the decline, it is on the rise. If 
136,000 people are dying of lung cancer every year and there are 
430,700 deaths every year, those deaths eventually are going to go up. 
And your taxes are going to go up. The American people's taxes are 
going to go up, because we have to pay to treat the tobacco-related 
illnesses.
  So when I keep hearing this malarkey about a big tax bill, my 
friends, we are paying a big tax bill as we speak, a huge tax bill, 
that is going to get a lot bigger if we do not attack this problem.
  So I would ask my colleagues who keep buying and parroting the 
tobacco advertisements--according to the New York Times, now $60 
million has been spent--please keep in mind the big tax bill that is 
paid every day of every year in this country to treat tobacco-related 
illnesses, not to mention the big human tax that results from premature 
death. Every day, today--today--3,000 kids will start to smoke, and 
1,000 of them will die early. One thousand of them will die from lung 
cancer--emphysema, pneumonia, influenza, and other terrible causes of 
death.
  There are 200,000 heart disease deaths per year. One-fifth of all the 
deaths attributed to heart disease are directly attributed to tobacco. 
There are 90,000 coronary heart disease deaths a year.
  There are 3,000 lung cancer deaths a year due to secondhand smoke. 
There are 84,000 lung disease deaths every year, from pneumonia, 
influenza, bronchitis and emphysema, and 90 percent of all emphysema 
cases in America--90 percent--are attributed to smoking--90 percent.
  Mr. President, one of the most heartwrenching things I have ever seen 
in my life is to go down to the VA in Phoenix, AZ, and see veterans 
outside, because they are no longer allowed to smoke inside, sitting 
outside with oxygen tanks and taking the mask away and smoking a 
cigarette. Mr. President, if there was ever a living, breathing example 
of the addictive aspects of nicotine, it is that terrible sight.
  And 163,100 fires were caused by smoking in 1992. That is the latest 
information we have on that. And 2,000 deaths were caused by smoking-
related fires.
  Mr. President, that is the result of inaction on the issue of 
tobacco. That is the result. I will not go through them again, but I 
think it should be pretty compelling. So 430,700 deaths, or 20 percent 
of all deaths for all other causes, are directly related to smoking and 
tobacco.
  The American taxpayer, Mr. President, through the costs of Medicare 
and Medicaid--the tobacco-related costs are $130 billion, and the 
health care costs alone are $50 billion; that is Medicaid, Medicare, 
private health insurance and small business insurance.
  Loss of economic productivity is $80 billion. Smokers cause $501 
billion in excess health care costs in America.
  Maternal smoking costs in medical expenditures are $661 million, and 
6,200 children die every year as a result of parents smoking. Forty 
percent to 60 percent of children's asthma, bronchitis, and wheezing is 
due to secondhand smoke--an extra 160,000 cases of asthma and an extra 
79,000 cases of bronchitis, and an extra 172,000 cases of wheezing.
  Prenatal smokers raise health care costs by $175 extra per child 
under the age of 2, and smoking-related fires cost $500 million. 
Complicated births, $1 billion per year. Pregnant women smokers are 50 
percent more likely to have a mentally handicapped child. Prenatal 
smokers cause 48,000 low birth weights per year. Between 150,000 and 
300,000 children under 1\1/2\ years must be hospitalized for secondhand 
smoke: bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infection, and asthma. Developmental 
difficulties for complicated deliveries in low-weight babies costs $4 
billion a year for children of women who smoke.
  There are two enormous costs associated with smoking and tobacco use 
in America. Both of them are pretty compelling. One, obviously, is the 
huge number of deaths, 20 percent of all the deaths in America that are 
attributed to it. And the problem is not getting better; it is bound to 
be getting worse. Of course, these enormous costs go to the taxpayers, 
as well.
  When we are arguing this debate, and sometimes it gets a little 
emotional, I think we ought to keep in mind what we are talking about 
here. It is a compelling and very emotional situation when so many 
young Americans are afflicted with this addiction.
  In Arizona, State medical costs, total medical costs from tobacco are 
$559 million; Pennsylvania, $1.982 billion. Those are the total medical 
costs, as a result of tobacco, to the States.
  Mr. President, according to the New York Times on May 22:

       More than a third of high school students who try 
     cigarettes develop a daily smoking habit before they 
     graduate, the Government said today.
       In a survey of more than 16,000 students nationwide, nearly 
     36 percent who had ever smoked said their smoking had 
     escalated to at least a cigarette a day, the Centers for 
     Disease Control and Prevention said.
       Nearly 73 percent of the students with a daily habit said 
     they had tried to quit. Of those who tried to quit, 13.5 
     percent were successful, the agency said.
       Seventy percent of students surveyed said they had tried 
     cigarettes at least once. The percentage is probably higher 
     among teen-agers over all because the survey did not include 
     dropouts [Mr. Eriksen said]. Previous studies had estimated 
     that 33 percent to 50 percent of people who experiment with 
     cigarettes become regular smokers.

  I just went through the costs per State of tobacco costs. Probably 
far more compelling than that is the number of kids currently under 18 
who will die prematurely from a tobacco-related disease. In my home 
State of Arizona, 98,516 children will die prematurely--98,516. That is 
a lot of young people. I think that, obviously, we have an obligation 
to do something about it.
  Title I of the bill provides the Food and Drug Administration with 
authority over tobacco, tobacco products, and nicotine. The FDA is not 
a new bureaucracy. It is a fairly old agency with an important mission 
that most Americans fully support--to protect public health and risk to 
our food supply, drugs, and other substances ingested into the human 
body, including cigarettes. The FDA already serves as authority over 
cigarettes under their current power, something in large part

[[Page S5531]]

upheld in the courts. This was not made up by the bill's authors. In 
fact, the industry agreed to broad FDA authority over tobacco products 
last June. So those who argue that this bill grants large, huge new 
powers to the FDA, please remember, as in many other aspects of this 
bill, it was modeled after the June 20 agreement last year between the 
tobacco industry and the 40 attorneys general themselves. It provided 
broad new authority over tobacco products, as does this bill.
  What nefarious activities will the FDA undertake with authority over 
tobacco--which I reemphasize the industry agreed the FDA should 
exercise? First, the FDA will oversee ingredients to ensure that 
cigarettes are not adulterated with ``putrid or poisonous substances.'' 
Most Americans, including smokers, don't like the idea that tobacco 
companies have put additives such as ammonia into cigarettes to 
increase addictiveness. Two, the FDA will oversee branding to ensure 
health and other claims are true, establish youth access rules, and 
oversee marketing to stop appeals to children, accept performance 
standards to better protect health without creating demand for 
contraband, and medically assist the developing and marketing of safer 
tobacco products.
  The courts have already upheld that the FDA has most of these 
authorities under current law. This bill wisely places those 
authorities into a separate body of law so that nontobacco foods, drugs 
and devices are not affected by rules that should be targeted solely to 
cigarettes and the regulation of nicotine. I want to emphasize, those 
who worry about the expansion of FDA authority into other products, 
this is a separate chapter. This is a separate body of law.

  I find it curious that those who believe FDA should have no such 
authority seek greater protection for the tobacco industry than the 
industry itself which agreed to broad overall FDA oversight last June. 
So, we are not talking about any new bureaucracies here.
  Title II sets underage tobacco use reduction targets. Again, not 
something concocted by the bill's authors. The targets are the same as 
what the industry agreed to last year, entailing no new bureaucracies.
  Part (b) of title II establishes a State retailing licensing program 
with respect to tobacco products. Retail licensing was requested by the 
40 States attorneys general and agreed to by the industry last June. It 
is designed to hold sellers accountable and to better enforce the 
prohibition in every single State against selling tobacco products to 
minors.
  According to the Centers for Disease Control, 256 million packs of 
cigarettes are illegally sold each year to underage youth--the same 
youth that the industry so vigorously targeted in its marketing. 
Representatives of the National Association of Convenience Stores have 
assured me they support licensing. They don't want bad actors selling 
to kids, and licensure, in the same manner we do with alcohol, is a 
means of achieving that goal.
  This brings me to another aspect of the attack on this bill, and that 
is the issue of black market and contraband. Why is it we are able to 
pretty well prevent, if not totally eradicate, black market or 
contraband as far as alcohol is concerned? One of the major reasons is 
because we license the sale of alcohol. So those who are concerned 
about the increase in contraband, the so-called black market, might 
support rather than oppose this bill because of the licensing 
provisions associated with it.
  Earlier I submitted for the Record a letter from the Convenience 
Store Association expressing no opposition to this legislation. I also 
submitted a letter from the National Governors' Association expressing 
appreciation that the licensing program is flexible. It respects States 
rights and is paid for by the tobacco bill. We have heard much scorn 
and outrage expressed about the licensing provision, even though it is 
basically the same mechanism in place for alcohol sales. Do Senators 
who find tobacco licensing to be such an abomination believe we should 
have one standard for alcohol and another for tobacco when tobacco 
kills far more people every year and over 90 percent of smokers begin 
long before they are of legal age? Does it matter that over a quarter 
of a billion packs of cigarettes are sold to minors every year?
  Part (c) of title II provides for the distribution of tobacco money 
for smoke cessation and prevention activities by the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services. HHS already has an office of smoking and 
health--not a new bureaucracy. Over 90 percent of these moneys are 
block granted to the States and will use existing public and private 
nonprofit organizations--not new bureaucracies.
  Do the opponents of this bill and those opposed collectively to 
settling the State suits truly believe we should not provide smoking 
prevention and cessation activities?
  Again, these are the essential elements of stopping 3,000 kids a day 
from taking up a habit that will kill a third of them --activities that 
the industry agreed to and that were contemplated in the June 20 
agreement.
  Mr. President, I want to emphasize again that every public health 
group in America and every living Surgeon General back to 1973--every 
expert in the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes 
of Health--every single one of them says that if you want to stop kids 
from smoking or reduce the number of children who smoke in America, you 
have to have a comprehensive approach. Part 1: Raise the price of a 
pack of cigarettes which, by the way, the tobacco industry agreed to 
last June 20--not as much as contemplated in this bill, but they agreed 
to it. The second is active cessation programs. You can't do that 
without a comprehensive bill.
  Mr. President, there is an organization of people called the ENACT 
Coalition. They are a major public health organization; they formed a 
coalition called ENACT to promote effective national action to control 
tobacco. This growing coalition has pledged to work with Congress and 
the administration, the public health community, and the American 
people to pass comprehensive, sustainable, effective well-funded 
national tobacco legislation.
  Mr. President, let me tell you who is in this coalition. They are the 
Allergy and Asthma Network; American Academy of Child and Adolescent 
Psychiatry; American Academy of Family Physicians; American Academy of 
Pediatrics; American Association of Respiratory Care; American 
Association of Physicians of Indian Origin; American Cancer Society; 
American College of Cardiology; American College of Chest Physicians; 
American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine; American 
College of Physicians; American College of Preventive Medicine; 
American Dental Association; American Heart Association; American 
Medical Association; American Psychiatric Association; American 
Psychological Association; American School Health Association; American 
Society of Anesthesiologists; American Society of Clinical Oncology; 
American Society of Internal Medicine; Association of American Medical 
Colleges; Association of Black Cardiologists; Association of Maternal 
and Child Health Programs; Association of Schools of Public Health; 
Association of State and Territorial Health Officials; Association of 
Teachers of Preventive Medicine; Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids; 
Children's Defense Fund; College on Problems of Drug Dependence; 
Community Antidrug Coalitions of America; Council of State and 
Territorial Epidemiologists; Family Voices; Federation of Behavioral, 
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences; HMO group; Inter-religious 
Coalition on Smoking and Health; Latino Council on Alcohol and Tobacco; 
National Association of Children's Hospitals; National Association of 
County and City Health Officials; National Association of Local Boards 
of Health; National Hispanic Medical Association; National Mental 
Health Association; Oncology Nursing Society; Partnership for 
Prevention; Society of Public Health Education; Society for Research on 
Nicotine and Tobacco; Society of Behavioral Medicine, and the Summit 
Health Coalition.

  Mr. President, I would have to submit that this is a fairly reputable 
and respectable group of experts on the issue of health care in 
America. This is a very impressive coalition. I have not seen one quite 
like it. And for us to ignore their plea for a comprehensive 
settlement, I think, would be a great disservice not only to them, but 
to the people that they represent.

[[Page S5532]]

  Surgeon General Koop and Dr. Kessler--and I have a letter from every 
living Surgeon General, Republican, Democrat, liberal conservative--are 
saying that we have to enact this bill.
  Mr. President, this part of the bill also provides health research 
money to the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease 
Control, and the National Science Foundation, all of which are well-
established, respected and world-renowned health research 
institutions--not new bureaucracies.
  We are at a critical stage in history, on the brink of breakthrough 
treatments and cures and treatments for scourges such as breast and 
lung cancer, heart disease, and countless other devastating human 
illnesses. I am sorry that some of my colleagues prefer to ignore the 
possibilities and opt instead for loaded buzzword attacks to change the 
subject.
  Finally, this title of the bill calls for a comprehensive tobacco 
counteradvertising campaign, as agreed to by the attorneys general, 
public health advocates, and the industry last year, and is among the 
most important weapons in stopping kids from smoking. Every tobacco 
bill that has been introduced, including alternative measures being 
prepared by opponents of the pending legislation contemplates a large 
investment in counteradvertising.
  I tell my colleagues that the advertising section does include what 
some have characterized as a ``new bureaucracy.'' The ``bureaucracy'' 
is known as the Tobacco-Free Education Board, a part-time, bipartisan, 
unsalaried advisory committee designed to help formulate and execute a 
nationwide antismoking advertising campaign.
  So if you want to call that a new bureaucracy, guilty as charged.
  The alternative to this advisory panel would be to give millions of 
dollars to a political appointee to determine, unfettered, how such 
public appeal campaigns should be designed and executed--powers that 
neither Republicans or Democrats are eager to hand over to the other.
  Even opponents of the bill who have expressed outrage about 
``bureaucracies'' and might otherwise dedicate themselves to ridding 
the Nation of the terrible burden imposed by a part-time advisory panel 
probably would not prefer the alternative.
  Title III of the bill provides for an array of new tobacco warnings 
and calls for the public disclosure of cigarette ingredients--something 
most cigarette smokers deserve and would like to know. Both items were 
agreed to by the industry and, again, require no new bureaucracies.
  Title IV creates a single trust fund to receive and disburse revenues 
generated by the bill. The fund would be administered by the Secretary 
of the Treasury--a position that has been in existence since the Nation 
was founded, and it does not constitute a new bureaucracy. The bulk of 
the money will go to States to reimburse their taxpayers for Medicaid 
losses. Half of the State money, which represents the Federal share of 
Medicaid, may be used on a menu of seven options, from drug-free school 
initiatives to children's health care, each of which is an existing 
program--not a new bureaucracy.

  Title V contains new standards for exposure to secondary smoke. The 
40 States attorneys general who were part of the June 20 agreement 
called for a mandatory national environmental smoke standard to be 
enforced federally and by the States. This bill allows the State to opt 
out of the Federal program if it adopts and enforces its own. The 
establishment and enforcement of standards can be done through existing 
agencies--not new bureaucracies.
  Title VI of the bill deals with Indian tribes and ensures that 
reservations don't become a safe haven for youth access to tobacco. 
Price increasing will affect reservations as they do all other areas of 
the Nation. This section allows tribes to receive smoking prevention 
and cessation grants as States--in the same vein that we administer all 
other Federal grant programs. None of this entails new bureaucracies, 
but simply fulfills our obligation to tribes and Native Americans to 
whom the Federal Government has a trust responsibility.
  Title VII, as amended, contains various civil liability provisions, 
including an initiative that assists individual plaintiffs in seeking 
and obtaining just commendation--no new bureaucracies.
  Title VIII calls on the industry to submit an annual report on how 
the companies are meeting their obligations under this act in the State 
settlement decrees, and calls on existing Federal authorities, 
including the Surgeon General, to evaluate that progress. This section 
also protects industry whistleblowers from threats and workplace 
retaliation--not any new bureaucracies.
  Title IX calls on the industry to make available to the public 
documents they have been illegally hiding to avoid disclosure of their 
misdeeds and data on the health risks of tobacco products. A panel of 
sitting judges will make determinations on the propriety of attorney-
client privilege assertions. Calling on sitting judges to perform a 
judicial task is not--I repeat, not--a new bureaucracy.
  Title X contains the farm provisions which include various grant 
programs and farm community assistance initiatives. Some feel strongly 
opposed, but let us not lose sight of the fact that the debate between 
the LEAF Act and the Lugar alternative is not about whether we will 
have these assistance programs. It is a debate over how much we will 
spend on them and whether buyouts should be concluded at a time 
certain.
  Title XI contains provisions related to international marketing, 
smuggling, and vending machines. In the international arena, the bill 
calls for multilateral and bilateral agreements regarding tobacco 
marketing and advertising to kids. These agreements can be consummated 
through existing authorities--not new bureaucracies.
  To address concerns raised by many of our colleagues that our Nation 
should not simply export the problem of kids smoking to children 
overseas, this section does authorize an international tobacco control 
awareness program which is subject to appropriations and, if funded, 
can operate through existing institutions.
  Antismuggling initiatives are also contained in this section, 
including a call for tobacco package markers to distinguish licensed 
products from contraband, requiring licensure of manufacturers and 
wholesalers, and recordkeeping for large transactions. Will this entail 
additional law enforcement activities? I suspect so. But we have heard 
a number of our colleagues express concern about black market and 
contraband. These provisions will address those concerns.
  Unfortunately, many have not yet grasped the reality that with or 
without this legislation the cost of cigarettes will increase 
dramatically. If every State settles under the same terms as Minnesota, 
we might well anticipate increases of $2 per pack.
  The June 20 settlement called for a per pack increase of 65 cents 
and, I might point out, agreed to by the administration--65 cents. Some 
of the most vociferous opponents of this bill on the basis of black 
market and contraband are preparing alternatives that would impose an 
excise tax of 75 cents per pack. So I trust that antismuggling 
activities is not among the bureaucracy about which we are hearing.
  Also included in this title is a non-Federal, private corporation to 
reimburse vending machine owners for losses due to banned cigarette 
machines, a major conduit of tobacco to children. Again, some of those 
who have decried bureaucracy were among those most adamant about 
ensuring a mechanism to compensate vending machine owners. We do this 
without creating a new Federal bureaucracy.
  Title XII authorizes appropriations from the trust fund to compensate 
asbestos victims whose conditions were exacerbated by tobacco use 
should Congress under separate legislation establish such a process for 
so doing as the Supreme Court invited. No new bureaucracies.
  Title XIII permits the Veterans Administration to sue tobacco 
manufacturers to recoup the loss for treating veterans for smoking-
related illnesses, a power some believe the VA already has and includes 
no new bureaucracies.
  Finally, title XIV contains the process by which those manufacturers 
that wish to formally settle their State suits must agree to, including 
the up-front payment, additional advertising restrictions, et cetera, 
and no new bureaucracies.
  So, Mr. President, I hope we are keeping an eye on the ball about 
what

[[Page S5533]]

this is all about in addition to the bureaucracy red herring.

  We have heard from opponents who object to this bill because it will 
increase the price of tobacco. Let us stop kidding ourselves. If we 
fail to pass this bill, the States will go back to court to win in 
judgment or settlement what we might more efficiently accomplish with 
national legislation and the price of cigarettes will increase. It was 
recently announced by the tobacco companies as a result of the 
Minnesota settlement there would be an increase in the price of a pack 
of cigarettes in Minnesota.
  The experts say a price increase is a critical component--not the 
only component but a critical component--in the effort to stop 3,000 
kids from starting to smoke. We have heard from opponents who say the 
bill is about ``tax and spend.'' Providing $195 billion to States in 
settlement of their cases so that State taxes can be lowered and half 
of it can be used for a menu of public health-related options agreed to 
by the Nation's Governors is not ``tax and spend.''
  Do opponents of this bill suggest that we should not dedicate a 
portion of tobacco settlement money for health research as agreed to in 
the June 20 agreement? Should we not have additional resources for 
smoking prevention, cessation, and counteradvertising as agreed to on 
June 20? Should we not assist tobacco farmers and farm communities that 
will be affected by changes in tobacco consumption, the same people who 
have been urged to grow tobacco by the Federal Government for years?
  And let me point out that one of the most scurrilous activities of 
the tobacco industry is to go to the farmers and say that the passage 
of this legislation will harm you. If they were concerned about the 
farmers, why is it that in the June 20 agreement they made with 40 
attorneys general there was no provision for the tobacco farmers of 
America--none, not one word. It is remarkable. It is remarkable that 
they should go to the tobacco farm communities and now oppose this 
legislation when they had no provision to take care of the farmers in 
their agreement of last June 20.
  Should we not dedicate a portion of tobacco settlement money to 
assist veterans suffering from smoking-related illnesses when the 
Federal Government handed out cigarettes in their mess kits?
  I ask my friends why we are not talking more about the real ``tax and 
spend'' associated with tobacco--tax and spend that tobacco companies 
impose on the American people every year in the form of $50 billion in 
smoking-related health care costs including Medicare and Medicaid--
almost $455 for every household in America? Every household in America, 
whether they smoke or not, pays $455 a year in taxes every single year, 
and that is going up, to treat tobacco-related illnesses.
  This is a tax of epic proportion paid by every taxpayer, every hard-
working American who must purchase health insurance for his or her 
family and every small business struggling to provide employees with 
affordable health care coverage. Do the tobacco companies worry about 
taxpayers as they entice their ``youth market'' to begin a lifetime 
habit that sickens and kills hundreds of thousands a year, the cost of 
which others must bear? I don't think so. This bill intends to stop 
some of that and stop it immediately.
  We have heard from opponents who say we don't need a comprehensive 
bill to stop kids from smoking. With all due respect to my colleagues 
who are so wise and expert in so many areas, prudence and good sense 
dictates that the Nation take the advice of the experts who maintain 
unanimously that only a comprehensive bill will address what they refer 
to as a ``pediatric epidemic,'' including every living Surgeon General, 
Republican and Democrat, the American Medical Association, and the 
organizations that I just quoted.

  For those who wish to kill this bill, let us examine what we are 
really talking about. We are talking about 418,000 Americans a year who 
die of smoking-related diseases, the number one cause of preventable 
disease and death in America by far.
  I had the privilege of hearing a speech by the head of the National 
Cancer Society who put it into perspective:

       Among a graduating high school class of 1,000, 6 will die 
     from violence, 12 will die from motor vehicle accidents, 250 
     will die in mid life from a smoking-related disease and 
     another 250 will die later in life but far earlier than 
     necessary from smoking-related illness.

  Let me just repeat that.

       Among a graduating high school class of 1,000--

  This from the head of the National Cancer Society--

     6 will die from violence, 12 will die from motor vehicle 
     accidents, 250 will die in mid life from a smoking-related 
     disease and another 250 will die later in life but far 
     earlier than necessary from smoking-related illness.

  So I have great respect for my colleagues who oppose the bill, and 
everybody is entitled to their opinion, but they are not entitled to 
the facts. It all comes down to this very simple premise: The tobacco 
companies target kids to sustain their cigarette sales. Kids take the 
hook; 3,000 a day start the habit, and that number is increasing. 
Smoking is the single greatest killer in the United States by far. What 
physicians call a ``pediatric epidemic'' won't change unless we do 
something. This bill is a bipartisan opportunity to act. If it fails, 
the industry will go away happy but the death march will continue. I 
ask my colleagues, which it is going to be?
  Finally, let me make one more additional comment. I know my friend 
from Massachusetts wants to speak as well.
  Mr. President, over the last week or so in the formulation of the 
highway bill, some very bad things were done to the veterans of 
America. I am ashamed and embarrassed. These men and women who have 
served our country deserve better than what they got out of that 
highway bill. In fact, some of the money earmarked to treat their 
illness is now going to highways and bridges.

  I know that fewer and fewer of my colleagues have had time in the 
military. Those of us who are a little older have a vivid memory of 
smoke breaks, of C-rations that contained cigarettes, of the end of the 
chow line where cigarettes were given out for free. If there is any 
group of Americans that deserves to be reimbursed for tobacco-related 
illness, it is the veterans of America.
  We used to call, as my friend from Massachusetts recalls, smoke 
breaks. We would have smoke breaks all the time. In times of tension in 
combat, cigarettes were smoked for relaxation, for relief of tension. 
And the Armed Forces and our Government encouraged those men and women 
in the military to smoke.
  At the appropriate time, the Senator from Massachusetts and I, along 
with the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Rockefeller, who has 
played a very important role, will propose an amendment to put 
approximately $3 billion into treatment of veterans for tobacco-related 
illness. I urge my colleagues to support such a move. We intend to have 
some debate on that particular amendment, and I believe it should pass 
overwhelmingly.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that debate only be in order 
prior to the Senate reconvening at 2:15 today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, the Senator from 
Arizona, for his review of this legislation and for his summary of 
where we find ourselves today. I also, obviously, particularly thank 
him for his laying out the important agenda with respect to veterans 
and what happened in the course of the last week or so. I will join 
with the Senator, as others will, I know, in trying to remedy that 
impact, and I am confident that the U.S. Senate will do so.
  I also recall, not just the degree to which there was a kind of 
dependency built into the system that both of us were in in the Navy, 
but often at the end of a particular exercise, or General Quarters, the 
announcement would come over the loudspeaker on the ship saying, ``The 
smoking lamp is lit,'' and there was this sort of automatic rush to 
smoke. It was part of the doctrine, if you will--the ethic. And an 
awful lot of veterans, as a consequence of that and other things, many 
other things

[[Page S5534]]

through the course of life, are today suffering. They are suffering as 
a consequence of that. So I think the Senator is right on target in his 
desire to address that.
  I also thank Senator McCain for his long efforts with respect to this 
particular bill. In all of the debate on the floor of the Senate, it 
has been lost that this is a bill that was reported out of committee by 
a vote of 19 to 1, reflecting a considerable consensus about at least a 
beginning, a starting place. I think most people would agree, as a 
reflection of the vote that took place on the floor of the Senate 
regarding the cap on liability, that the bill which came to the floor 
moved significantly in the direction that the Senate ultimately decided 
it wanted to move, by eliminating all of the restraints on class 
actions and other limitations on liability, with the sole exception of 
the $8 billion a year. The Senate, in its wisdom, decided to remove 
that.

  But the point is, this is a bill that I think has been improved, at 
least in its starting point, and hopefully in the next days we can 
improve it further. I listened carefully to the Senator from Oklahoma 
last week, and I took the time last night to reread his criticisms of 
this legislation. I think here and there there were some good points 
that he made. There are ways, in amendments which I am confident the 
Senator from Arizona and I and others are willing to accept, that those 
issues could be remedied. So my hope is that in the next days we are 
going to be able to move to do that.
  But the most important thing, as we reflect on where we are going, is 
to remain focused on the positive ways, the constructive ways, in which 
this bill helps to save children's lives. That is the purpose of this 
debate. There is not anything else that we are really trying to do 
here.
  There is a reason that there is a tobacco legislative effort taking 
place. There is a fundamental reason that we have come to the floor of 
the Senate, recognizing the work of the attorneys general around the 
country who brought suit because of this. There is a reason they 
brought suit. There is a reason that the suits are settling. There is a 
reason the tobacco companies are coming to the table and agreeing to 
settle those lawsuits. They are settling them and agreeing to do the 
very things that we are seeking to codify in this legislation, but on a 
national basis, so we can save time, save money, and save lives. That 
is the purpose of this legislation.
  One cannot ignore the fact that, in Minnesota, if you extrapolate the 
cost of what the tobacco companies have agreed to in Minnesota, and 
take that out on a State-by-State basis across the country, you 
actually have a greater expenditure than you would have under this 
legislation. So the tobacco companies have accepted, at least in the 
legal process, what is being fought here in the national legislative 
process. I think the truth is that ultimately we are going to come to 
an agreement that recognizes that fact.
  The bottom line is that the entire legislative agenda we are engaged 
in here is to break the cycle of addiction that is hooking 3,000 
children a day on a deadly drug. It is a very simple debate 
fundamentally. Yesterday, the Senator from Texas agreed that you do 
have to raise the price, and he is prepared to raise the price in order 
to try to reduce the access. At least we are sort of chipping away at 
the arguments here and slowly beginning to expose the truth, the facts, 
as the Senator from Arizona talked about. You can make the arguments 
politically on the floor, but you cannot make up the facts. The fact is 
that 3,000 kids a day get addicted to this drug and, as a consequence 
of that addiction, a third of those young children will die early of 
throat cancer, larynx cancer, esophagus cancer, kidney disease--some 
kind of disease that will be initiated and enhanced as a consequence of 
the addiction to this drug.
  So we should not be diverted by the side issues here. The side issues 
are purposefully being used to obfuscate what the real focus of this 
legislation is. There is only one reason for raising the price. The one 
reason for raising the price is that every single expert, including the 
tobacco companies themselves, have said if you raise the price you 
reduce the access of young people to cigarettes.
  If this were merely a debate about an adult habit, I guess you would 
hear a lot of discussion about willpower, about adult choice, about 
taking responsibility for your actions. If this were just a debate 
about dangerous adult behavior, whether it is smoking or drinking or 
driving too fast, we would not be talking it out on the floor of the 
Senate, I suspect. Fundamentally, we wouldn't be. But it is not a 
debate about adults; it is a debate about people who did not make a 
rational adult decision to start smoking. It is a debate about 
children. And the underlying reality is that 86 percent of smokers 
begin while they are children. Mr. President, 86 percent of America's 
40 to 50 million--what is the number?--45 million Americans who are 
deemed addicted to cigarettes, 86 percent of them began as teenagers. 
They began as children. So this is a discussion about underage smoking 
and that underage smoking fundamentally leads to a very sad and tragic, 
slow suicide.
  Some of my colleagues have raised concerns about raising the price. I 
am glad the Senator from Texas has accepted the notion. I think other 
colleagues may ultimately do that, because the concept of raising the 
price is not something that was initiated with some Senator who came 
down and said, ``Boy, wouldn't this be a great idea? Wouldn't it be 
wonderful? Here is another way to raise some revenue.'' That is not 
where it came from. It came, quite simply, from all of the analyses, 
studies, research, polling data, focus groups, all of the experts have 
come together and said, ``If we raise the price, we can reduce the 
number of children who are smoking.'' We can't eliminate it--we all 
understand that--but we can significantly reduce the access of young 
people to cigarettes.

  I ask my colleagues not to ask Senator McCain or myself or Senator 
Kennedy or Senator Conrad or any of the other advocates of this 
legislation to be trusted in their word that somehow that is going to 
happen. I ask them to look at the economic analyses --at the Treasury 
analysis, the CBO analysis--all of the analyses that have been done.
  Among the 39,000 documents--and this is perhaps one of the most 
interesting bases for making this judgment--among the 39,000 documents 
that were subpoenaed over the years as the tobacco cases slowly made 
their way through the courts, we find a Philip Morris document that 
says, quite simply, the following:

       It is clear that price has a pronounced effect on the 
     smoking prevalence of teenagers.

  That is a Philip Morris document. You will find an R. J. Reynolds 
document, and it says as follows:

       A key finding is that younger adult males are highly 
     sensitive to price. This suggests that the steep rise in 
     prices expected in the coming months could threaten the long-
     term vitality of the industry by drying up the supply of new 
     younger adult smokers entering the market. It could also 
     undermine the long-range growth potential of brands which 
     rely on new younger smokers, including Marlboro and Newport.

  That is one of the most extraordinary documents we can ever conceive 
of reading after all of the protestations to the contrary of tobacco 
executives who came before the Congress and raised their hands and 
swore under oath that they don't target young people. Here is an R. J. 
Reynolds document talking about how price would affect their targeting 
of younger smokers, how price was going to reduce the industry's 
capacity to grow by depending on its ability to reach the younger 
smokers and get them addicted, particularly to Marlboro and to Newport.
  One might wonder why the tobacco industry conspired, therefore, for 
years to keep those internal memos under lock and key. The secret, I 
think, in those documents is not that price correlates strongly with 
sales, but it does. That is not the secret. The secret is that the 
number of young smokers, which we know translates too often into 13 and 
14-year-old smokers, is going to go down dramatically if cigarette 
prices go up. Thus spoke the industry itself.
  That is why we are here in the U.S. Senate arguing about whether or 
not it is appropriate on a national basis to raise the price of 
cigarettes, and the cigarette companies themselves have told us in two 
ways: One, in these memos it is appropriate and it will work; and they 
have told it to us in the

[[Page S5535]]

settlements in Minnesota and in Mississippi and elsewhere where they 
have agreed to those kinds of increases, and in the national settlement 
where they agreed to raise the price of cigarettes, albeit not to the 
$1.10, but they agreed to raise the price. They did that because they 
understood that was a component of reducing teenage smoking.
  So this is not an idea cooked up in the U.S. Senate. Don't come to 
the floor of the U.S. Senate and start suggesting that this is some 
Democrat or some large-scale tax-and-spend issue. This is an idea that 
the tobacco industry itself has written about for years. This is an 
idea that the health care industry itself has known for years would 
work. Public health experts are united in the consensus that raising 
the price of cigarettes is going to reduce youth smoking. Dr. Koop and 
Dr. Kessler said:

       Data indicate that children and youth are more price 
     sensitive than adults and that pricing has a strong and 
     immediate impact on reducing sales of tobacco products 
     overall.

  The Congressional Research Service said:

       Most of the evidence suggests that teenagers are about 
     three times more sensitive to cigarette prices as are adults. 
     For every 10 percent price increase, the number of underage 
     smokers drops by 5 to 7 percent.

  According to the Treasury Department:

       Substantial real price increases are the best way to combat 
     youth smoking.

  According to the National Cancer Institute:

       An increase in the cigarette excise tax may be the most 
     effective single approach to reducing tobacco use by youths.

  According to the Centers for Disease Control:

       Tobacco use prevention activities should be designed to 
     prevent the use of all tobacco products. Such activities 
     should include increasing tobacco prices.

  That is an extraordinary consensus--a consensus of the industry, a 
consensus of independent health analysis, a consensus of our economic 
advisers and economic analysts. I think that speaks volumes.
  Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to also listen to someone who is 
suffering from a lifetime of smoking. Listen to any of the people who 
in their twenties and thirties have already begun to feel the impact, 
and they will tell you how easy it is to buy a pack of cigarettes at 
age 12 and 13 when it only costs as much as four or five candy bars. 
Talk to women who will tell you that when they were adolescents, they 
gladly made that choice about how to spend the change in their pockets 
because cigarettes were going to keep them thin and candy bars would 
not.
  That is the story of Pamela Lafland, a 27-year-old mother of two who 
lives in Boston. Several weeks ago, I met her, and I thank her for 
sharing her story with me.
  When Pam was 11 years old, she had a lot of the same dreams that most 
young women have: She wanted to be attractive; she wanted to be 
successful; and she wanted to, while she was younger, look older sooner 
so that she could start making what she thought were grown-up decisions 
in a grown-up life.
  She took her pocket change down to the corner grocery store and she 
bought cigarettes. She got hooked. At 11, she was already dreaming of 
having children some day, and at age 22, she had her kids. At age 24, 
because of juvenile emphysema, she was now raising them from a 
wheelchair. At age 26, she had a lung transplant, and today her body is 
rejecting her lung. Her medical bills have exceeded $200,000, and she 
has found out, as she says herself, that when she was young, cigarettes 
were cheap, they were readily available, she didn't know to the 
contrary, and today she knows she could never measure the cost of a 
pack of cigarettes in quarters and dimes and nickels.
  For Pam, the cost has been her health, and in many ways, the 
structure of her life, the quality of her life. Pam tells me that 
raising the price of cigarettes would have made a difference to her and 
will spare children today from a price system that allows children to 
make the grown-up decisions that all but guarantee that when they do 
grow up, they are not going to have a lot to look forward to.
  I think we ought to listen to Pam, and we ought to listen to a lot of 
people like Pam who are similarly suffering in some stage of their life 
as the consequence of the ready accessibility in the United States of 
what we know to be a killer narcotic substance.
  We have heard a few Members of the Senate coming to the floor and 
suggesting that raising the price of cigarettes is going to hurt low-
income people. Mr. President, there is a certain question mark, I 
guess, to put it politely, that raises when some of those people who 
have opposed health care for children, who have opposed day care, who 
have opposed raising the minimum wage, who have opposed student loans 
for people who are struggling--all of these things--are all of a sudden 
here on the floor, those very same people are the ones standing up in 
defense of ``poor people'' who are going to be hurt because the pack of 
cigarettes is going to cost more.
  Leaving aside that question mark about what brings them to the floor 
suddenly as the protectors of the poor in this instance is the fact 
that it suggests that somehow poor people do not care about their 
children's smoking, that it is OK to protect getting cancer on the 
cheap, that what we are going to do is somehow protect the notion that 
if we keep cigarettes cheap, poor people can buy them and get cancer, 
since more and more people in poor areas of America, in urban areas, 
are the ones in whom we see the highest increase in smoking today.
  So the argument is, we are going to protect you from the increase in 
the pack of cigarettes, which is going to make it cheaper for you to 
get cancer, cheaper for you to have your kids' lives ruined. It is an 
insult to poor people to suggest that they are not just as supportive 
of raising the price of cigarettes so their kids will not go down and 
buy them with whatever pocket change they have. We ought to recognize 
that. We should not be making it easier for a pack of cigarettes to be 
accessible to people for whom those cigarettes have become one of the 
better alternatives to some of the other problems that they have in 
their lives.
  In poll after poll--in poll after poll--a large majority of those 
people with incomes below $30,000 a year favor raising the price of 
tobacco, the price of cigarettes. And they do it because they do care 
about their kids and because they do want to have an opportunity to 
have those kids grow up healthy and capable of enjoying the fullness of 
their lives. Low-income people, just like wealthier people, understand 
that we have to reduce youth smoking.
  They also support raising the price because they recognize that 
spending on tobacco represents about less than 2 percent in spending in 
any income category. It isn't an issue of income or class; it has 
nothing to do with your occupation or the size of your family budget. 
It boils down to a consensus that by far most Americans want the U.S. 
Senate to do the right thing, which is to take cigarettes out of the 
hands of children. And the way you take cigarettes out of the hands of 
children is partly to raise the price, which has been deemed to be the 
most effective method, but also to engage in counteradvertising, 
research on addiction, cessation programs, and other things that I will 
talk about in a minute.
  So I believe this bill hits that mark. Senator McCain has reviewed 
each section of this legislation and laid out the ways in which it 
helps to prevent youth from smoking.
  Studies have shown that low-income smokers in Great Britain on 
average reduced their expenditures on cigarettes in response to a 
tobacco tax increase there. We ought to look to other countries and 
take the example from them. I think that is very significant, and the 
reason is that a significant percentage of low-income smokers quit 
smoking entirely in response to the price increase. Hooray. That is 
precisely what we want to achieve.
  So if we can induce a whole group of people--which is part of what is 
factored into the volume adjustments of this bill--if we can induce 
large numbers of people to quit, then, again, also the country will be 
better off. So the policy works.
  I think my colleagues need to be wary of those companies that have 
actually targeted people in the past now coming to us and fostering 
some kind of egalitarian argument when their

[[Page S5536]]

lack of a sense of egalitarian sensitivity drove them to 
actually target people in low-income communities to become addicted. 
You cannot have it both ways. All of a sudden, this new concern is 
obviously a concern which will continue to allow people to become 
addicted and to buy cheap cancer. The only reason tobacco companies 
oppose the higher prices is that they know it will diminish the number 
of people who smoke.

  Mr. President, I hope the U.S. Senate is going to be united in the 
effort to reduce youth smoking. We are convinced by all the scientific 
evidence and by decades of precedent, even by the secret--now not 
secret--memos of the tobacco industry itself, that an increase in 
cigarette price will reduce youth smoking. So we ought to end the 
debate on the floor of the Senate about ``tax and spend.'' This did not 
originate in the Senate, did not originate with Democrats, did not 
originate as an idea of some political party that wanted to find 
revenue. It originated out of scientific analysis and economic analysis 
that tells us to a certainty that if the price of cigarettes goes up, 
then the number of people who smoke goes down.
  Then the next question for the Senate is, all right, if you have 
raised the price, and you have X amount of new revenue coming in, what 
is the best way to use that to continue to be able to reduce teenage 
smoking and to have an impact on the impact of smoking itself? That is 
what we are doing. That is precisely what this bill seeks to have an 
impact on. It is not, in the final analysis, a regressive burden on 
low-income families; it is a progressive idea that literally sends a 
generation of American kids into a world that will be healthier and 
safer no matter how much money their parents earn. It helps relieve all 
Americans of $130 billion that we lose each year in medical costs, lost 
wages, sick days, and all of the fallout from smoking.
  As my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and talk about the 
cost of this bill--the cost of this bill is the cost of trying to limit 
young people from smoking. The cost of not doing that is $130 billion a 
year that every American is paying--even nonsmokers. Every single 
American is required to fork out of their tax dollars every year at 
least $1,370 per person in America to pay for the costs of other people 
smoking. That is what we pay now. The hidden tax on America is the tax 
of smoking itself for all of the diseases and trauma that come as a 
consequence of that.
  It helps--this bill--I believe, to relieve an individual smoker of 
over $19,000, on average, in lifetime smoking-related medical costs--
more than double the average amount of a year of tuition at a public 
university.
  I want to point, Mr. President, to the chart here that talks about 
the annual costs of smoking. We have 1 million kids who begin smoking 
every single year. There are already 45 million smokers in the United 
States. And, as we know, those 45 million smokers, 86 percent of them 
started right here as young children smoking. The costs of this break 
down to 420,000 deaths a year--a year. Those are people in a hospital 
bed, in a pulmonary ward, with tubes sticking out of them, can't 
breathe, oxygen, around-the-clock nursing, extraordinary medical 
costs--420,000 deaths a year; more people, as we know now, than died in 
all of World War II, all of Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, put together, 
every year--every year--in the United States.
  We have an opportunity to do something about that, and we are sitting 
here playing politics about it rather than trying to find the best way 
of doing something about it--420,000 deaths every single year directly 
related to smoking; $80 billion in lost productivity to the country as 
a consequence of the sickness and the disease that people pay the price 
for as a consequence of smoking; $80 billion in just total health care 
costs. That is just the cost for caring for 420,000 people dying and 
for the people who are not dying or are not yet dead in the 
outyears. There are 420,000 people who die a year as a result, but in 
the preceding year--and the preceding years--they are just sick, but 
very sick, and cost enormous amounts of money.

  So we are spending $80 billion a year because 86 percent of those 
adults got hooked when they were kids. Here we are in the U.S. Senate 
with an opportunity to stop them from getting hooked as kids, reducing 
the number of adults smoking, reducing the amount of health care, 
reducing the number of deaths. There is $24 billion just in Medicaid 
and Medicare costs that come out of the pocket of every American. That 
is the cost.
  You want to talk about taxes? It is the cigarette tax on every 
American that is obscene because most Americans didn't ask for that. At 
least raising the pack of cigarettes is voluntary. You can choose 
whether you are going to go in and buy them. You can choose whether you 
will buy one pack or one carton. You can choose how much you will pay 
out of your own pocket. But these costs, no American gets a choice 
about these costs. These are forced on every American. These are put to 
every American as a consequence of our allowing a narcotic drug to be 
sold over the counter in America. It is time we did something about it.
  Now, some have suggested that we ought to take some of this money and 
reduce the marriage penalty. I would like to reduce the marriage 
penalty. Even though some Americans who get married aren't affected by 
it, some are. We need to find a way to balance, how to do it smartly.
  But if we take this money and don't put it into the effort of 
researching addiction and don't put it into our children in terms of 
confidence building, all of the things they need for self-esteem to 
make judgments not to smoke, to help with child care, to help with the 
after-school times, which is when most of these kids go out and start 
smoking, when there is no parent home--when school lets out at 2 
o'clock in the afternoon and they are hanging out on the street corner 
with their friends and we don't have enough time to give them something 
constructive to do--that is when it happens.
  Instead of providing that kind of constructive oversight with this 
money, some want to get rid of the marriage penalty. You get rid of the 
marriage penalty and you will not have done anything to reduce these 
kids from smoking. I am for getting rid of the marriage penalty, but 
don't take it out of the ``hide'' of the effort to get our kids 
unhooked from cigarettes. That doesn't make sense. That is not the 
smartest tradeoff we have been presented with in the U.S. Senate. 
Surely we could find a way to agree to vote on the marriage penalty--
and I will vote to get rid of it--at the appropriate time.
  If we can't do that, then let us at least whittle down some kind of 
sensible tax rebate to the people who we are supposedly expressing the 
greatest concern about--poor people--who are going to be paying more 
because they are buying cigarettes, and target that in some kind of 
responsible way. If we did that, then, I think, we really would be 
consistent with the effort to try to reduce teenage smoking. That is 
what we have to keep focused on here. Every time we get diverted, let 
us come back to what this is about: It is only about stopping our 
children from smoking, finding the way to reduce the numbers of kids 
who smoke. And we have to find the most sensible ways to try to do 
that.
  Now, it seems to me that what the Senator from Arizona has described 
in his opening statement really lays out a series of things that we 
believe are able to try to do that. In the inner cities of our country, 
there is a 78-percent likelihood that a child is going to start smoking 
before the age of 18. What does that mean? It means you will have a 
young woman who is more than two times more likely than a woman who 
doesn't smoke to have a low-birth-weight child. It means you will have 
the highest rates of juvenile emphysema and asthma in our urban 
centers. It means we will have a generation on the road to cancer of 
the mouth, throat, larynx, esophagus, pancreas, bladder, and kidney. 
Cigarettes are killing more children than ever before in our most 
underserved communities. The obligation of this legislation is to find 
a way to try to reduce that.

  What do we do in this bill? We hear people coming out here and 
talking about ``bureaucracy and government.'' We have left most of the 
options here to the States. In fact, there are minimal numbers of 
mandates. The mandates are simply sort of a Federal effort to say we 
want to make sure they

[[Page S5537]]

stay on the target of trying to reduce kids from smoking but gives the 
States a pretty fair recipe as to how to do that. And it leaves the 
States the option of giving a tax cut. As the Senator from Arizona 
said, they can make their own choice. The big hand of Washington 
doesn't have to step in and tell them what to do. If they decide they 
want to take some of the money that comes back from this revenue and 
give them a tax cut, they can do that. We don't stop them.
  So it seems there is ample opportunity here. But most importantly, 
this bill sets up a structure for some cessation programs for 
counteradvertising, for research. Every single one of those are related 
to stopping children from smoking. We don't know all that science can 
tell us about addiction yet. Therefore, we have laid out a certain 
component of funding here to fund additional research on a national 
basis to try to learn more. Maybe we can come up with some kind of 
vaccine, Mr. President. Maybe we will come up with some kind of a 
magical combination of education and early input that makes it 
exceedingly difficult for people to make the choice to smoke. Maybe 
there is some easy antidote. We don't know yet. Whatever it is that 
triggers the mechanism in the chemical structure that makes people 
addicted, we ought to be researching. That is what we do. We put money 
into research so we can reduce the impact on our society of the $80 
billion a year of medical costs. We have counteradvertising. We have 
learned that is a very, very significant way of reducing people from 
smoking. There are very significant evidences of that. It seems to me 
that we ought to keep our eye focused on that.
  Let me try to document that a little bit with an example. In 
Massachusetts, we were able to fight our State's addiction to 
cigarettes by a combination of raising tobacco prices and funding 
tobacco-control programs, exactly what we are talking about doing in 
this legislation. In 1992, Massachusetts voters approved Question 1, a 
ballot initiative, to increase the excise tax on cigarettes by 25 
cents. The funds from that 25 cents were spent on cessation, outreach, 
a Smoker's Quitline, media campaigns about the dangers of tobacco, as 
well as research. The Smoker's Quitline, which is 1-800-TRY-TO-STOP, 
received over 35,000 calls through June 1996. It distributed 23,000 
cessation materials. The media campaign is entitled ``It's Time We Made 
Smoking History'' and it reached 94 percent of the children in my 
State. The Tobacco Education Clearinghouse distributed over 2 million 
pieces of tobacco information literature in English, Portuguese, 
Spanish, Vietnamese, and other languages, and 66 primary health care 
sites have provided smoking cessation programs with individual 
cessation counseling and advice to 36,000 patients. Forty-nine youth 
tobacco education programs sponsored 2,570 community tobacco education 
events, which reached 950,000 Massachusetts youth. Thirty-three 
population at-risk programs provided tobacco education and cessation 
activities to targeted racial, ethnic, and gender groups.
  What were the results of these efforts? The annual per person 
cigarette consumption in Massachusetts dropped by approximately 30 
percent from 1992 to 1997. The plan is working. There is no denying 
that. So what we are talking about in this bill is not pie in the sky, 
it is not some made-up notion of a do-good/feel-good concept. It works. 
It has proven to work. The only question before the U.S. Senate is 
whether we are prepared to maximize our efforts to reduce young people 
smoking and reduce the tax on Americans of smoking that occurs today, 
even for those who don't smoke and haven't asked for that tax.
  The research shows that we are not talking about some Massachusetts--
this is not a miracle or pie-in-the-sky. This can work all around the 
country. In the last 10 years, States from Minnesota to California to 
Arizona have invested in similar community-based antismoking campaigns. 
The American Stop Smoking Intervention Study for Cancer Prevention has 
provided funding to 17 States for smoking prevention programs, and they 
have managed to cut tobacco consumption by 10 percent in just 4 years.
  So, Mr. President, here you have it. In our State, we have a 30-
percent reduction. In California, Minnesota, and Arizona, where they 
have made these efforts, small as they are, there has been a 10-percent 
reduction. What we are saying in this legislation is that if we can 
take this tobacco revenue and apply it to teenage smoking reduction 
efforts, we will reduce the number of Americans who are addicted, we 
will reduce the number of Americans who die each year because of this, 
we will reduce the amazing cost to our society of the burden of our 
health care, and we will reduce the Medicare and Medicaid component 
that is associated with it, the tax burden.
  This is a tax cut plan. This will reduce the cost to America over 
time, and that is why it makes sense. We also know that 
counteradvertising works. We need to be empowered--and this legislation 
seeks to do that--to reach millions of young kids in ways that will 
change their attitudes about smoking.
  I know that my colleague from Oklahoma expressed concern last week 
about the increase in marijuana use in the United States and the 
increase in smoking. I share that concern with him. There is an 
inexcusable rise in the level of marijuana smoking taking place. One of 
the reasons is that there has been a fallback on the commitment that 
was made a number of years ago to the kinds of proactive efforts of 
sports stars, role models, advertising, and other efforts that are so 
essential to helping kids perform the roles and attitudes necessary not 
to smoke.
  For decades, we have had the tobacco industry pushing cigarettes that 
taste sweet. I read a Wall Street Journal article where a former 
tobacco sales representative is quoted as arguing, ``This cigarette is 
for somebody who likes the taste of candy, if you know what I'm 
saying.'' Well, we know exactly what he means, Mr. President. What we 
ought to be doing is empowering local communities who know what he is 
saying to deliver a countermessage against youth smoking.
  Mr. President, in States where they have run messages against youth 
smoking--places like Arizona--it has worked. It has brought children 
out of risk. Nationally, I don't think any one of us will ever forget 
some of the ads we have seen, like the Marlboro Man dying in a hospital 
bed from lung cancer. He was the guy who was sitting on the horse with 
the hat on and moustache, looking so macho, selling a generation of 
cigarettes. He died from lung cancer last year, regretting the smoking 
and regretting the image that he portrayed, and he made an 
advertisement about it. That is effective. There was an advertisement 
of a cigarette addict who lost her larynx to smoking through her 
tracheotomy. I have talked with teenagers who quit smoking the day they 
saw those ads. Can anybody say that the effect is going to be the same 
the day we get rid of the marriage penalty?
  Come on, Mr. President, let's face it. The reality is that everybody 
understands if we can run an effective national effort in order to try 
to counter the impact on our children, we will make a difference. It is 
up to the U.S. Senate to make that difference now. We have a choice 
about our priorities. We can come down here and continue to wage the 
fight against the tobacco companies who continue to stand in opposition 
to a bill that tries reasonably to deal with the problem of smoking. I 
say to my colleagues, where it isn't reasonable, let's amend it. Let's 
come down to the floor with an appropriate substitute or amendment and 
let's pass it, if it is worthy. If it isn't, let's complete work on 
this legislation and do what we ought to do to reduce the access of 
smoking to our children.

  It seems to me that it is not hard to discern that the purpose of 
this bill is genuine and it is simple: It saves children's lives. It 
could save a generation. And it does so with minimal bureaucracy, 
minimal intrusiveness, and minimal interference. I am open to any ideas 
that anybody has which will sustain a counteradvertising program, 
sustain the cessation programs, sustain research into addiction, but at 
the same time do it somehow with less ``bureaucracy'' or intrusiveness. 
I am confident the Senator from Arizona and I would accept an amendment 
if it did so in a way that sustained the fundamental purposes of this 
legislation.
  So we have this opportunity, and there is no higher priority in the 
agenda of this Nation, there is no higher

[[Page S5538]]

priority in the business of the U.S. Senate. It is hard sometimes to 
make the words as meaningful as one wants to, hard to find a way to get 
over the partisan tug-of-war that takes place here, and it is hard 
sometimes to get the full measure of what this is about. The full 
measure of what this is about is not the measure of a price of a pack 
of cigarettes, it is the measure of a child's life, it is the measure 
of what it is like to have emphysema and be in a hospital because you 
haven't made the decision that was cognitive when you were young. It is 
the measure of our responsibility as adults and as citizens to be able 
to reach our children at a stage when they are most impressionable and 
subject to making these kinds of mistakes. That is the measure of what 
we are doing here. I hope the U.S. Senate will measure up and do what 
every American understands is in the interest of our Nation and in the 
interest of our children.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for 
his important statement and the important comments he has made. I will 
yield the floor in a minute to Senator Wellstone, who is waiting.
  I want to make a couple additional points here. One of the aspects of 
this bill that has been raised is, of course, the legal fees. There is 
no doubt that that issue has to be addressed. The President tried to 
address it in one of his amendments, which I supported. I believe that 
he and others are working together to try to guarantee that most of the 
money goes to the public and would still leave the lawyers plenty of 
room to get rich. That is our goal here, and I think we can achieve 
that without too much difficulty on a consensus basis.
  On the issue of the look-back, the so-called Durbin amendment that we 
are specifically debating, let me point out that if the so-called look-
back provisions are made strictly company-specific--remembering that in 
the bill we have an uncapped company-by-company surcharge of $1,000 per 
youth smoker--there can be wild gyrations in the cost of a pack of 
cigarettes, which would really drive those specific companies out of 
business. If it were strictly company by company, if one company did 
not achieve the goals and had to increase its payments by a significant 
amount, those costs would have to be passed on, as we know, to the 
consumer. That would drive the tobacco company out of business.
  I repeat, we are not trying to drive the tobacco companies out of 
business, we are trying to drive them out of the business of marketing 
to kids. What you would really end up doing if we adopted the Durbin 
amendment is basically cause wild gyrations in the cost of a pack of 
cigarettes and drive companies out of business. Mr. President, what we 
have done in the managers' amendment is basically strike a compromise 
between an overall penalty to the industry, but also a specific penalty 
of $1,000 per youth smoker, which, by the way, is double the amount a 
young person spends on cigarettes per year.
  That is a very significant penalty. I would point out that the Durbin 
amendment would also increase the cost to about $7 billion where ours 
is approximately $4 billion.
  Mr. President, I do not see the Senator from Massachusetts in the 
Chamber, but I think it is important for us to recognize something else 
here, too, that has been going on. I know that many of my colleagues 
dislike the tobacco companies. I have to say, in all candor, I have 
grown to like them less as I have been seeing my name splashed all over 
newspapers, television and listened to it on radio for about the last 
month, but let us not forget what we are trying to do here. Are we 
trying to just drive tobacco companies out of business, which probably 
would not upset me if I did not believe and know that 40 million adult 
Americans would still smoke.
  If American tobacco companies went out of business, two things would 
happen: One, there would be a Marlboro or a Camel or another coming out 
of Mexico, El Salvador, whatever; they would be exporting cigarettes 
into the United States, which we would not have nearly as much control 
over. So people would not stop smoking immediately if we drove all the 
tobacco companies out of business. So it is not in our interest to 
drive all the tobacco companies out of business, particularly since we 
would also be deprived of the funds to be used to try to convince 
children in America not to smoke.
  So with all due respect to my colleague, what I see going on here, 
interestingly, from both ends of the political spectrum is such 
punitive amendments that we will drive the tobacco companies out of 
business. Now, we will feel good; we will be able to go back and tell 
our constituents: I voted for this amendment; I voted for that 
amendment; I took away any protection that they had; I voted to 
increase the price of a pack of cigarettes; I voted to make those 
punitive provisions stronger and, by God, I showed those tobacco 
companies.
  Well, that may be a short-term gain, but it will not solve the 
problem of kids smoking. That is why this bill had better not get too 
far out of kilter. Now, I do rely on the experts. I do rely on their 
opinion. I am not an expert. I am not an expert on smoking. I freely 
admit that. But I listened to the Treasury Department. I listened to 
the public health groups. I listened to the experts who told me that if 
it becomes too punitive, too big in penalties, too big a price for the 
tobacco companies to pay, they will do what the asbestos companies did 
and that is declare bankruptcy and go out of business. So it may feel 
real good to vote for an amendment that punishes the tobacco companies 
further.
  Now, I will admit, Mr. President, I have some subjectivity here 
because I spent weeks and my staff spent hundreds, thousands of hours 
sitting down saying, what is the best, carefully balanced package we 
can come up with which achieves our goal. And that is why we received a 
19-to-1 vote through the committee--because it had balance. We are in 
danger of knocking this thing way out of balance, if we haven't 
already.
  Now, again, I will stop because the Senator from Minnesota is on the 
floor, but we could sit here day after day, week after week, if we want 
to, voting for amendments that punish the tobacco companies more and 
more. But that will not stop a kid from smoking. Every day that goes by 
3,000 kids will start smoking. Today 3,000 kids will start smoking. 
Tomorrow 3,000 kids will start smoking.
  So I urge my colleagues to understand what our goal here is--not to 
drive the tobacco companies out of business, but to stop kids from 
smoking. If you drive the tobacco companies out of business, which may 
make one feel good, one, you are still going to have 40 million adult 
smokers in America and probably kids smoking, too; and, two, you are 
not going to effectively address this problem that we are trying to 
through this legislation which was addressed on last June 20.
  So I hope my colleagues will keep that in mind as we vote for 
amendments and show how macho and tough we are on the tobacco 
companies.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, let me say to my 
colleague from Arizona I had a chance yesterday to speak in the 
Chamber, and I have been wanting to say this while he is in the 
Chamber. I read a very eloquent and really beautiful piece in the 
Washington Post he had written about Senator Goldwater, who was, I 
suppose, on the opposite side of the spectrum from where I stand, but I 
talked about how especially in recent years--I never knew Senator 
Goldwater, never had a chance to talk with him, but in recent years as 
I have read about him and seen some of the things he said, I have so 
much respect for the way in which he kind of tied together personal, 
intellectual and political integrity.
  I say to my colleague from Arizona, who will probably disagree with 
the rest of what I say over the next several minutes, I do believe when 
it comes to conscience and integrity we do have somebody who lives up 
to that very high standard Senator Goldwater set. And that is Senator 
McCain from Arizona. The only thing I didn't agree with in the article 
the Senator wrote was when Senator McCain said he will

[[Page S5539]]

just be a mere footnote in Senate history. I do not agree with that. I 
think Senator McCain is an enormously important force here in the 
Senate and in the country, and I better not go any further with that 
because I am about to disagree with the rest of what he said.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that David Vang, who as an 
intern in his last day in our office, be allowed to be in the Chamber 
during the debate today on this piece of legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I agree with really what both my colleagues have had 
to say, the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry, and Senator McCain, 
about what our goal is with this legislation, that we ought to keep our 
eye on the prize. The goal is to reduce youth smoking and to save the 
lives of children in our country and, I would argue, also children 
throughout the world.
  In that regard, from my perspective, not from the point of view of 
being macho, I say to my colleague from Arizona, but from a point of 
view of what I think would be the best public policy that would make a 
difference, I think we took a step backwards when we did not raise the 
price increase of cigarettes to $1.50 per pack. Senator Kennedy's 
amendment, I think, was on the mark because I think if we had done that 
over 3 years, demand, indeed, being elastic, would have gone down in a 
very significant way especially with young people.
  But regardless of the debate on that amendment, we move forward. 
Senator McCain has labored long and hard to make this a good bill. So 
have other Senators--Senator Kerry and Senator Hollings and others. But 
again we all agree that the reduction of youth smoking and the 
protection of children's lives should be the primary goal of this 
legislation. So let us just say we are in agreement in that goal.
  Now, we are forced to come to the floor of the Senate--and I am going 
to speak about Senator Durbin's look-back provisions--and fight hard 
for children and young people for some protection because big tobacco 
for decades has employed legions of marketers who were paid to find 
ways in which they could addict our children and procure them as future 
long-term customers.
  That is exactly what it has been all about. That was the mandate that 
the advertising agents received from the tobacco industry. This 
industry poured a tremendous amount of its wealth and its talent in 
what they viewed as their mission. And, oh boy, were they successful. 
We have heard it many times now; we hear it every day. Senator McCain 
just recited the same statistic; 3,000 kids start smoking each day in 
our country alone, and a third of them, at least a third of them, will 
die a premature death due to tobacco-related illness. So these tobacco 
companies know how to market and they know how to do it well. They are 
experts. They have been experts at whispering in our children's ear and 
seducing them to smoke. So let us now get these companies to use their 
expertise to change the tenor of these whispers and to have them induce 
our children not to smoke. For a long, long, long time--too long a 
time--they targeted our children, they whispered in their ears, they 
seduced them to smoke. They have the expertise. Now what we are going 
to do is provide them with incentives to, in fact, get our children not 
to smoke. These companies are responsible, or have been responsible, 
for what Dr. David Kessler calls the ``pediatric disease of smoking.'' 
Let me repeat that, ``the pediatric disease of smoking.''

  That is what the look-back provisions are all about. They are to make 
the tobacco companies responsible for meeting certain youth-reduction 
goals, and they hold them financially accountable if they fail to reach 
these goals. Senator McCain is to be commended for the inclusion of 
look-back provisions in the bill which we have before us today. But I 
think, not from the point of view of trying to destroy the industry but 
from the point of view of how we can, in fact, make sure we have the 
right incentives to get these companies to make an all-out effort not 
to target children and, in fact, reduce the number of children who are 
smoking, I think we have to have stronger and better incentives. That 
is why I come to the floor to support the Durbin-DeWine amendment.
  I think what this amendment does, which is most important, is that it 
makes the payments or the penalties for missing the youth-reduction 
targets more company specific as opposed to primarily industry-wide.
  I am worried about the industry-wide approach for a couple of 
different reasons. First of all, I think what will probably happen is 
that the industry, as a whole, will just simply say: Look, there is no 
particular incentive for any one company to really go all-out to reduce 
teenage smoking and we will just kind of share the additional cost. 
But, you know what? In the long run, it will be more profitable to do 
that.
  The problem is that there is a negative incentive for companies to 
try to live up to our goal. After all the goal is to reduce teenage 
smoking. The goal is to dramatically reduce this addiction. The goal is 
to dramatically reduce the death of people in our country. Therefore, 
it would seem to me that if some companies are doing all they can to 
meet that goal but other companies are not, and the industry as a whole 
doesn't do the job, then everybody ends up having to pay a penalty, and 
there is simply no incentive for a company to do right. The way it 
stands now, if a certain company does make the effort to stop children 
from smoking their cigarettes, but the rest of the industry doesn't, 
then the company that did make the positive attempt is punished more 
than any other. First, they are hit by the industry wide look back 
payments even though they made every good-faith effort to do the right 
thing. And, second of all, by doing the right thing they are 
financially burdened by the loss of their youth market.
  So it seems to me the look-back provisions in the bill as they now 
stand are flawed, and I think to make the incentives or disincentives 
more company-based, more specific-company focused, is a much more 
effective public policy way of reaching our goal, which is to have a 
dramatic reduction of teenage smoking.
  The Durbin-DeWine amendment is also, I think, a strong improvement 
because it raises the 10-year reduction goal from 60 percent to 67 
percent. In our committee, the Labor and Human Resources Committee, 
which for a short period of time had jurisdiction over this 
legislation, Senator Kennedy had an amendment which passed the 
committee which would have raised the goal to 80 percent, an 80-percent 
reduction in youth smoking. We heard from any number of different 
experts who said you can do that. We can do that and we should. This is 
truly one place where we ought to set the bar as high as we can because 
we are talking about children's lives. Children's lives are precious to 
all of us. So I think by going to 67 percent, we have made a solid 
improvement that is easily doable and I think we should set the goal 
this high.
  Let me just finish up this way. I now come back to why I come to the 
floor to support the Durbin-DeWine amendment, which I think is a much 
more effective way of reducing youth smoking. I think the look-back 
provisions as they now stand are flawed. I do not think they are going 
to work well. So we want to have a piece of legislation which will be 
as strong as possible and will work well.

  I say to my colleague from Arizona, no company gets put out of 
existence. Every single company that makes a good-faith, all-out effort 
to reach these achievable goals and reaches them, will not have any 
problem at all. Those companies will have no look-back payments to 
make. It is simple. There is no reason, no inherent reason in this 
amendment that Senator Durbin and Senator DeWine have brought to the 
floor, why any companies would have to worry about going out of 
existence if, in fact, they make a commitment to live up to these 
goals. And that is what it is all about.
  I think the language of money is, in fact, the only language to which 
this industry has responded. While the pleas of parents and children 
and dying victims might fall on deaf ears, and they have for a long 
time, the clinking of coins is a sound to which they are most surely 
attuned.
  So I think right now we have some provisions in the legislation that 
I do

[[Page S5540]]

not think will work that well. I think this amendment that Senator 
Durbin and Senator DeWine have brought to the floor makes a lot more 
sense. Because if companies choose to use their marketing powers to 
discourage teenagers from smoking, which is exactly what this look-back 
provision will encourage them to do, they will avoid any look-back 
payments and at the same time they will improve America's long-term 
health. I think that is what this legislation is all about.
  Since I have some additional time here, I want to let my colleagues 
know that I will be introducing an amendment to extend the advertising 
protections that children here in the United States will enjoy, to 
extend those protections to children around the world. My understanding 
is that the amendment tree is filled right now, but I want to talk a 
little bit about this amendment. Again, as I have already said, the 
purpose of this legislation is the reduction of youth smoking. I 
believe the amendment I will introduce will further that goal and 
because it will it should have strong support from this body. What I am 
concerned about are some of the provisions in the legislation that deal 
with the international activities of this renegade industry. I think 
those provisions are inadequate.
  What I want to do is to make sure that the advertising and marketing 
restrictions that we have in this legislation also apply to the 
international scope of these tobacco companies just the way Senator 
McCain's bill was written when it passed out of Commerce Committee by a 
19-to-1 vote. So, for example, if we are going to say: Look, industry, 
you are not going to be able to use cartoon characters to market your 
deadly products here in the United States of America; I would like to 
say to these companies: You are not going to be able to use these 
cartoon characters to market these deadly products in any market 
overseas.
  I'd like to provide a little context for my colleagues. I will 
address this subject in more depth later on, but I wanted to draw from 
some interesting documents my State of Minnesota was able to obtain 
when Minnesota forced the tobacco industry to disgorge documents so 
revealing that the industry has been hiding them for years. An R.J. 
Reynolds document, penned in 1976, reads:

       Evidence is now available to indicate that the 14-18 year 
     old group is an increasing segment of the smoking population. 
     RJR-(tobacco) must soon establish a successful new brand in 
     this market if our position in the industry is to be 
     maintained in the long term.

  Or this from Philip Morris, in 1981:

       Today's teenager is tomorrow's potential regular customer, 
     and the overwhelming majority of smokers first begin to smoke 
     while still in their teens . . . The smoking patterns of 
     teenagers are particularly important to Philip Morris.

  The amendment I will introduce will basically say we need to put our 
foot down. We ought to say: No more. No more addicting of children. 
Tobacco industry, you need to cease and desist from diabolic marketing 
tactics which target children, which addict children, and which 
ultimately lead to the premature death of too many people, here and 
abroad.
  Some statistics about what Dr. Kessler has called the pediatric 
disease of smoking. The World Health Organization projects a staggering 
global death and disease burden related to tobacco use. The WHO 
estimates that one-third of the world's population over the age of 15 
currently smokes--one-third. This is equal to 1.1 billion smokers. Of 
those 1.1 billion smokers, over 90 percent live outside the United 
States and over 70 percent live in developing countries.
  Let me simply mention a couple of other interesting statistics that I 
will again get a chance to develop in this argument a little later on. 
I will give just a few examples. Over the last decade in which U.S. 
sales have declined by 17 percent, U.S. cigarette exports have grown by 
a staggering 260 percent.
  In 1996 alone, U.S. manufacturers exported a record 243.9 billion 
cigarettes--243.9 billion cigarettes. I have to say to my colleague 
from Arizona, I am not out here to bash, but I honestly and truthfully 
believe and can marshal evidence--and I will when we get to debate this 
amendment--that big tobacco has been absolutely shameless in its 
efforts to addict children, not only in our country but abroad as well.
  For example, if we are going to say, look, this is about reducing 
teenage smoking, this is about saving children's lives, I think a child 
is a child. We are talking about all of God's children. These 
advertisements have been shameful. They have been irresponsible. But, 
unfortunately, they also have been very successful.
  It is no surprise that when U.S. companies go into overseas markets, 
teenage smoking rates quickly climb. In Russia, from 1992 to 1993 
smoking rates among 13 to 16-year-olds increased from 31.5 percent to 
42.5 percent as a result of targeting efforts by tobacco companies.
  Smoking rates among male Korean teenagers rose from 18 percent to 30 
percent in just 1 year after the entry of U.S. tobacco companies. Let 
me repeat that: Smoking rates among male Korean teenagers rose from 18 
to 30 percent in just 1 year after the entry of U.S. tobacco companies.
  Just 2 years after Taiwan's cigarette market was opened to U.S. 
companies, the smoking rate among high school students increased 50 
percent. In both Taiwan and Japan, U.S. brands jumped from 1 percent to 
20 percent of the market in less than 2 years.
  The United States National Cancer Policy Board has noted that the 
introduction of U.S. cigarettes in Japan ``had the regrettable effect 
of contributing to an increase in overall tobacco consumption, 
especially among those under the age of 20.'' That is from the U.S. 
National Cancer Policy Board.
  My amendment will simply state that American tobacco companies, and 
those they control, are prohibited from selling, distributing or 
marketing tobacco products to children overseas, just as they will be 
prohibited from such activities in the United States.
  I have to say to you, Mr. President, that the good news is the bill 
that was passed by the Commerce Committee by a 19-to-1 vote had 
basically the same language as this amendment. And I say let us get 
that language back in the bill.
  My concern, as a United States Senator from Minnesota, is how can we 
dramatically reduce smoking among teenagers, among young people? How 
can we stop this shameless targeting of kids? Again, we had document 
after document after document. I know my colleague who is presiding has 
debated this. He has raised important questions--I always give that to 
him--and he argues his case forcefully about lawyers and lawyers' fees 
and all the rest. Fair enough. We have debated that, and we will debate 
it again.
  I will say this: In the Minnesota court case which was recently 
settled, it is incredible the number of documents and the amount of 
information we were able to get out before the public.
  Those documents tell a very disturbing story of an industry which in 
a very shameless way targeted kids and went all out to addict children. 
What I will be doing with this amendment that I will offer is to say, 
look, if we are going to be concerned about marketing to children in 
our country, then we also ought to be concerned about it with children 
abroad. The United States of America ought not to be known around the 
world, especially in these poor developing countries, as a country with 
an industry that is a leading exporter of death. That ought not to be 
our identity with people in those countries. I think the same marketing 
restrictions should apply. You no longer can use cartoon characters to 
push the buttons of children and addict them to tobacco in our country, 
and you are not going to do it in other countries either. That will be 
the gist of the amendment I intend to introduce.
  Mr. President, I do not see any colleagues on the floor, so I suggest 
the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REED. I rise today to speak on the amendment proposed by Senators 
Durbin and DeWine which would, in fact, strengthen the look-back 
penalty with respect to the tobacco legislation which we are 
considering today on the floor.

[[Page S5541]]

  The key element to changing the tobacco legislation is providing for 
a very strong, very tough, and a very appropriate look-back provision 
which essentially would extract additional payments from the tobacco 
industry if they fail to meet the goals in reducing teenage smoking. 
This is at the heart and soul of the whole tobacco debate--preventing 
children from getting easy access to tobacco products, preventing them 
from engaging in an addiction which will lead to their premature death 
in too many cases.
  When the tobacco industry announced their initial agreement a year 
ago with the attorneys general, they indicated a sincere desire, we 
hoped, to change the culture of tobacco, to change the culture of the 
way they deal with this product. Unfortunately, for many, many years, 
perhaps the whole history of the tobacco industry, they have been 
targeting young people as a means to boost their sales, as a means to 
enlist and, indeed, addict a whole generation of young people to be 
their customers. This approach, this marketing approach over many, 
many, many years, has led to the premature deaths of thousands of 
Americans. We have the opportunity now to stop that, if we do, in fact, 
legislate strong protections like a good, solid look-back provision.
  The tobacco industry has, as I indicated, spent billions of dollars 
trying to ensure that children become addicted to tobacco. In many 
respects, sadly, the tobacco industry has become addicted to children. 
They just can't seem to thrive economically without them. We want to 
change that addiction. We want to change the addiction that affects 
children, and we would like to change the addiction that has affected 
the industry. We would like them, if they are to market their product, 
to do so to adults.
  At the core of ensuring this happens is the requirement of having 
stiff assessments against the industry if they fail to meet the goals 
we have set out. That is at the core of the amendment proposed by 
Senator Durbin and Senator DeWine. I commend them for this amendment. 
It would strengthen significantly the protections and strengthen 
significantly the look-back assessments that the industry would pay if 
they fail to meet the goals of reducing teenage smoking.
  We have seen, over the course of many, many years, the deliberate 
attempt on the part of the industry to attract young people, to attract 
teenagers, to get them smoking early, so that by the time they thought 
about it, they were already addicted to tobacco products.
  The most revealing source of information about the industry's tactics 
has been the industry itself. In various litigation proceedings around 
the country, documents have been discovered and released publicly that 
indicate the systematic and very deliberate attempts by the industry to 
addict children. Documents obtained through the Mangini litigation 
further document these efforts. A presentation from a C.A. Tucker, vice 
president of marketing for RJR Industries, concluded, ``This young 
adult market, the 14 to 24 age group, represents tomorrow's business.'' 
Only, I think, would the industry think of ``young adults'' as 14-year-
old children. And it is quite clear and quite obvious they were 
targeting these young children. They have done it in so many different 
ways.
  They have also indicated in documents released by the Mangini 
litigation that they conducted extensive surveys of smoking habits of 
teenagers. They were trying to find out essentially what makes 
teenagers tick and how they can use those psychological forces to 
addict children to cigarette smoking. This hasn't changed and won't 
change this until we have a good, strong look-back provision.
  The improvements which Senator Durbin and Senator DeWine are 
suggesting are just the right approach to make this look-back 
assessment a positive and forceful one. For example, they will move 
away from the industry-wide assessment contained in the underlining 
McCain bill and have more company-specific assessment. This makes 
sense, because if a company thinks that they can act inappropriately, 
they can take chances, play loose with the rules, market to kids, and 
their competitors will help bail them out because the penalty is 
assessed across all the companies--the good and the bad equally--there 
will be no real incentive to change the behavior of individual 
companies, to change the marketing approaches, to change the 
advertising approaches, to assume and to ensure that what we have is a 
situation where children are no longer subject to this type of 
advertising.
  This company-specific approach is going to be, I think, the key. That 
is what is so critical about this amendment. If we don't have an 
industry-wide standard for the look-back assessment, we will never 
effectively change the behaviors of these companies. And, frankly, that 
is what we should be about. This legislation should not be about simply 
racking up huge payments from the industry. It should not be about how 
we spend those payments, necessarily. It should be quite a bit about 
changing behavior and the incentive of the industry so they stop trying 
to market tobacco products to children.

  Another important aspect of this amendment that is critical is that 
this amendment would increase the target the industry must reach in 10 
years from 60 percent to 67 percent. In essence, this amendment would 
require a 67-percent reduction in teenage smoking in 10 years. That is 
comparable to what the industry itself agreed to when they settled with 
the attorneys general. These two provisions--the company-specific 
approach, together with increasing the target reduction rate for teen 
smoking--are absolutely essential to having comprehensive tobacco 
legislation that will work and actually produce results. They will save 
the lives of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of young 
people today, who otherwise will continue to be the targets of tobacco 
advertising, will continue to be the targets of the industry and will, 
I fear, fall under the sway of this tobacco addiction prematurely, 
shortening their lives and impacting the public health of America.
  I urge my colleagues to do all they can to ensure that this amendment 
passes, and that we move from this amendment to consider other 
amendments that will also control the access of information that kids 
have about tobacco. I will propose an amendment that will condition the 
receipt of tax deductibility of advertising expenditures in compliance 
with the FDA rules for advertising. These amendments, together, are 
steps that we can and should take immediately to ensure that we succeed 
in changing the culture of the tobacco industry, that we succeed in 
ensuring that we take historic steps so that children in America will 
no longer be the victims of an industry that has preyed on them for too 
long.
  I urge my colleagues to join myself, Senator Durbin, Senator DeWine, 
and the other cosponsors, in passing this act.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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