[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 92 (Monday, July 13, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8085-S8086]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           TOBACCO AMENDMENT NOT SUBJECT TO A POINT OF ORDER

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, it has been inquired all around the 
country, by many people, as to whether or not the tobacco industry won 
its fight here in the Capitol. Did they bowl us over? Did they get the 
Congress to knuckle under? Are they so powerful that, over the will of 
the American people, the tobacco industry prevailed?
  And we say no. There is an amendment that has been offered by the 
Democratic leader, Senator Daschle, that would give us a chance in the 
Senate to choose between the tobacco industry, the tobacco lobby, their 
friends, and our Nation's children.
  This amendment would put a real dent in a public health catastrophe 
that has touched nearly every American family. There are few of us who 
have not heard about the ravages of tobacco on a friend or relative, or 
seen people we know weakened from respiratory conditions caused by the 
use of tobacco--smoking, and how it changed the structure of their 
lives, how they are unable to do the things that they used to do: 
participate in sports, play actively with their children or their 
grandchildren--or how they suffered premature death.
  Too often, on the Senate floor, we have heard opponents of the 
tobacco bill parrot the propaganda of the tobacco industry. I would 
like to take a moment to review the real issues in this debate.
  The tobacco industry still lives in a privileged regulatory 
environment set up by its backers throughout decades. We have now 
learned something about what they discussed in the privacy of their 
boardrooms, in the privacy of their records, in the privacy of their 
marketing schemes, knowing full well that if they manipulated their 
product, if they introduced more nicotine, if they changed the 
advertising, that they could capture the market replacements that they 
needed to maintain their profits and their revenues. They knew if they 
tweaked their ads in a certain way, they could get young people to pick 
up smoking. Joe Camel became better known, it was said, than Mickey 
Mouse.

  The reason the industry targets our children and engages in other 
corporate misbehavior is that, aside from the courts, the industry does 
not face any real oversight of their actions, despite their devious 
actions to fool the public. The tobacco amendment that we have before 
us would put oversight in place. That is the primary reason that the 
industry's friends killed the bill last month. They killed it because 
they didn't want to have their market opportunities reduced. They 
didn't want to let the children, the young people in our society, get 
by, live normal lives, without their life expectancies being impaired. 
They didn't want to protect the families and the well-being of our 
citizens, because it meant cash to these folks. It meant that their 
market might shrink a little bit, that their stock prices might go 
down, that their salaries might be decreased. They didn't care about 
the damage they wrought--not at all. We see it in testimony, some of 
which was given under oath, which has some questions surrounding it.
  This amendment would establish unfettered FDA jurisdiction over 
tobacco products, so people would know what is there, so people would 
know that smoking can really do a job on you. I know many people have 
talked about the importance of FDA jurisdiction, but I want to describe 
what it really means. It means that the Federal Drug Administration has 
the capacity to enforce their anti-teen-smoking efforts. It means that 
they will have clear statutory authority to enact the appropriate 
constitutional advertising restrictions to protect children.
  FDA authority also means that smokers will know what chemicals and 
additives are put into the cigarettes they smoke. We did some research 
in my office on this subject and found out there are some 500 
ingredients that are in a pack of cigarettes and some of these things 
are really toxic. We restrict their use in normal functioning in our 
society because we know how dangerous they are. When our constituents 
enter their local grocery or drug stores, cigarettes and other tobacco 
products are the only products meant for human consumption that do not 
disclose their ingredients. We ask it of food products. We are getting 
stricter all the time about what you have to worry about with meat and 
how you have to cook it and treat it. So, too, with vegetables. We see 
advertisements: ``Organically grown.'' But when it comes to tobacco, 
they put up, to use the expression, a pretty heavy smokescreen.
  Last year I introduced a bill to inform consumers about the 
ingredients and chemicals in tobacco products. Although we know that 
most smokers are aware that cigarettes are ``bad for you,'' I don't 
think the vast majority of smokers, or citizens, realize that there is 
arsenic and benzene and lead in the smoke they consume. These are 
things we prohibit. We prohibit the use of lead in paint today. We 
prohibit the use of benzene in products where it used to be routine. 
And arsenic--everybody knows that arsenic is a poison. Not only will 
the FDA require, under this amendment, the tobacco companies to 
disclose the presence of these chemicals, but it will also make sure 
the tobacco industry takes appropriate steps to decrease these poisons 
in their products.
  For years, the tobacco companies hid health secrets and secretly 
manipulated the ads as to the nature of their products. Under strong 
FDA jurisdiction, the tobacco industry will have to play by the rules. 
And, like other industries that produce drugs, they are going to be 
subject to the appropriate oversight to protect the consumers, to 
protect our citizens. It is long overdue.
  One thing we have to remember in the argument with the tobacco 
companies, the arguments that we have with them, is that this is not 
just another business, this is a business whose products are going to 
kill you if you use them, and there is no denying that. This is a 
business that is designed to make an addict out of you--addicts, over 
45 million in America today. If this business was conducted in a less 
auspicious place than a boardroom of a tobacco company, and if it was a 
group of individuals who said, ``We have a way to weaken America and 
here is the plot: We can kill over 400,000 Americans every year, and no 
one is going to say anything to us. Further, we cannot only encourage 
people to use the product, but we can start with them when they are 
children.''

  Do you know what? They will be more addicted to this product than 
many of them are addicted to illegal drugs. If we do this, we can cost 
America $100 billion in lost productivity and in health care costs; we 
can attack the American Nation, killing 400,000 people in a year, more 
than eight times the number that we lost in Vietnam in all the years of 
that war, a period of time when almost all America went into mourning 
about the loss of these young lives, these brave people; 58,000 died 
there--and here we lose 400,000 people a year, more than all of the 
wars that this country fought in this century. In one year, we kill 
more Americans with tobacco than those lost in combat in the 20th 
century.
  Mr. President, this amendment is going to require the tobacco 
products and advertisements to have large, clear warning labels that 
will send a strong message to kids about the real consequences of 
smoking. We are not just going to say ``could be dangerous to your 
health.'' And we are not going to permit it to be in colorful ads to 
make the young people feel like this is the macho image, this is the 
cool image that they want to portray. These warning labels will not be 
hidden in small type on the side of a pack of cigarettes. These labels 
will be prominently displayed in large type on each side of the pack of 
cigarettes.
  They will contain simple, truthful messages about the dangers of the 
product: Cigarettes are addictive; cigarettes cause cancer; and smoking 
can kill you. All true. All to the point. These new warning labels will 
add a strong dose of truth to the industry's deceitful billboards and 
other ads. They are not going to continue to see the guy on horseback 
roping the cattle or the champion swimmer or the champion athlete. No, 
those are bogus claims. We don't believe those anymore. But the problem 
is there has

[[Page S8086]]

been an impression created in the minds of America that goes back 
decades, and smoking appeared to be cool. Every movie actor and every 
movie actress not too many years ago would have a cigarette hanging out 
of their mouth.
  When I was a soldier in the Army and I was in the war zone, they made 
sure we had in our rations little packs of cigarettes, little sleeves 
with three or four cigarettes, as I remember, in each of them, free, to 
make sure you felt good about what you were doing. At the same time, 
they were creating addictions that we now wrestle with in our veterans 
population.
  What we want to see is the Surgeon General's warning clear and 
concise, clear and perceptible, instead of the industry lies like 
``Alive with Pleasure.'' We have seen that on billboards. It ought to 
read: ``Dying with pain,'' ``Dying too early,'' ``Unable to compete,'' 
``Unable to function,'' ``Unable to take care of your family,'' 
``Unable to stay with your children as they grow,'' because tobacco is 
dragging you down all the way.
  This amendment will require a truthful health warning to be printed 
on 20 percent of the billboard service. See it: ``Cigarettes kill''; 
``Dying with pain.'' That is the message that has to be out there, not 
this deceitful message that says, ``You are going to feel good.''
  There was a time, I remember, when they used to say doctors smoke one 
brand more than any other, because it had the real taste, it was good, 
it made you feel good.
  The tobacco industry and their friends don't want us to deliver this 
message to the public.
  This amendment, Mr. President, contains strong look-back provisions 
that were improved by an amendment approved overwhelmingly by this body 
66 votes to 29. I want to explain this look-back provision.
  It says that if you haven't gained the objective--and that is to 
reduce the number of teenagers who are picking up smoking--you and your 
company are going to have to pay and pay substantially. It is going to 
put teeth in our effort to dramatically reduce teen smoking.
  The real experts on marketing cigarettes to children are the tobacco 
companies themselves. So let them work to reduce that number. They have 
done a masterful job, and now they have to undo it.
  Mr. President, we know that the most efficient and effective way to 
dramatically reduce teen smoking is to raise the price, and this 
amendment will do that. A variety of factors contribute to a teenager's 
decision to try that first cigarette or to chew that first bit of spit 
tobacco. I know, because I smoked for 25 years. I took up smoking when 
I was a teenager, and I sure reinforced the image when I served 3 years 
in the U.S. Army.
  But we know that once you begin--tobacco companies know--most 
citizens don't realize that the first cigarette or the 15th or the 20th 
cigarette that you smoke is the reaction that says you are going to do 
this for the rest of your life whether you like it or not. How many 
people have we ever met in our lives--I know I have met, I will say, 
thousands who said to me, ``Boy, I quit once for 3 months, but then 
something happened, and I started again.'' Or ``I tried 100 times to 
stop smoking, and every time I have it licked, I come back to it.''

  We know that addiction is the tobacco industry's game. That is what 
they want to do: Get you addicted, and then the marketing is easy.
  Mr. President, another issue I have long been involved with is 
secondhand smoke. As many of my colleagues know, I, with the help of 
then-Congressman Durbin, now Senator Durbin, authored the legislation 
that prohibited smoking on airplanes. It is now 11 years ago.
  It was the first real dent in the tobacco industry lobbying armor, 
and it was the first step toward the eventual goal of an overall 
national standard on secondhand smoke. We know, and I see it all the 
time when I talk to people, if I tell them that I was the author of the 
smoking ban in airplanes, boy, they love it --``That is the greatest 
thing you have done.'' When I am searching for applause, speaking to an 
audience, I always tell them that and they all applause. These are 
people who remember how unpleasant it was to be in an airplane filled 
with tobacco smoke. The result is that secondhand smoke is very 
dangerous to the health and well-being of people.
  A Harvard study said that there are 50,000 fatal heart attacks a year 
that result from secondhand smoke--fatal heart attacks, secondhand 
smoke, other people's smoke. This amendment makes serious headway in 
protecting the public from the dangers of secondhand smoke.
  The tobacco industry has spent millions on propaganda and fake 
science reports to the contrary of the belief that breathing other 
people's smoke is not merely an inconvenience, it is a deadly poison.
  Mr. President, although the disease caused by secondhand smoke often 
takes years to manifest itself in most adults, that is not the case for 
young children. Secondhand smoke creates immediate health risks for 
children. Exposure to smoking increases a child's risk for respiratory 
illnesses and infections, impaired development of their lungs and 
middle-ear infections. Further, about half of all the childhood cases 
of asthma, chronic bronchitis and wheezing are attributable to exposure 
to secondhand smoke.
  It was really ironic when we were writing laws here that would 
prohibit smoking in places around the country, public buildings, et 
cetera, schools, places that children inhabit, and yet, smoking was 
allowed until very recently in the Capitol Buildings, on the Senate 
side absolutely.
  I thought to myself, how can I ask my people to work in an 
environment where they have to breathe someone else's secondhand smoke 
and know that I am doing the right thing, when smoking was allowed in 
the halls in other areas. It used to bother me that a pregnant woman 
working in my office would have to walk through the halls, and it would 
be like walking through a smoker's lounge.
  I know that she did not want to do it. And I did not want her to have 
to do it.
  So we have a chance, Mr. President, to say to the tobacco industry, 
``Listen, lay off our kids. Stop it. We want you to be as concerned 
about this as the public health community is.'' I hope that my 
colleagues will support this, the Daschle amendment, to provide our 
children with a fighting chance against the seductions offered by the 
tobacco industry.
  Its time will come. The game isn't over. What happens when the game 
is delayed in sports is, there is always a penalty that gets offered. 
That is the same thing that is going to happen here.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________