[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 97 (Thursday, July 12, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H4002-H4006]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TOBACCO IS NUMBER ONE PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERN IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to be
here this evening. Let me begin by talking a little bit this evening
about tobacco issues, because I have been involved as a State attorney
general on the issue of tobacco. I was involved in the massive piece of
tobacco litigation that State attorneys general filed across the
country in their respective States, and we also, as a result of that,
had a settlement; and we learned a lot about tobacco, about tobacco
companies, about tobacco companies targeting kids. It is something that
is a pretty incredible story. It also says something about public
health in America and where we should be headed.
That is our real purpose here tonight, is to talk about the public
health side and to talk also about the side of the administration, this
current administration, the Bush administration, carrying on a tobacco
lawsuit, the Federal Government versus the tobacco companies; and we
will also be talking about that.
First of all, let me talk a little bit about the public health
problem when it comes to tobacco, because a lot of people do not
understand the massive size of the public health problem that we have
here in America when it comes to tobacco. Mr. Speaker, 435,000 people
every year are killed by tobacco. These are tobacco-related deaths, and
it is a huge number. When we hear the number, we all hear statistics
and we wonder what they mean. Take all other causes of death out there,
and let us just go through a few here, auto accidents, suicides,
murders, deaths by infectious diseases, deaths from AIDS; think of any
other chronic illnesses, heart disease. If we add a lot of these up and
we total them, we still do not get to the number of deaths caused by
tobacco.
So when we talk about the cause of death and talk about public health
problems, we clearly have a huge one when it comes to tobacco; and it
is one that I think is in a way demonstrated, and I am going to have
another Member join me here and maybe others if they want to come down
and talk about this; but it is demonstrated by a physician that I
talked to, a cancer doctor in New Mexico. She is an oncologist. She
told me this story. She said, I work in the cancer field. It is a very
trying field to work in. She is very interested in tobacco and lung
cancer and that whole relationship.
{time} 1915
She said, ``If tomorrow we could stop people smoking, one-third of my
patients would go away immediately.'' So the people that she is
treating today, if we stopped individuals from smoking, she would lose
an entire third of her patients. She of course said that she sees every
day all the pain and suffering that people go through. She said, ``I
would be happy to have that happen, to see that loss of patients.''
So when we are talking about cancer docs across the country taking a
look at this, we can see the kind of impact it is having.
One of the other facts here that is very, very important is that
tobacco companies have targeted our kids in America for addicting them
to tobacco. I would just like to give some of the facts here.
People do not realize that the tobacco companies saw their markets
going down about 10 or 15 years ago. They saw their markets going down.
They saw the number of people shrinking. The older people were
quitting. They did a lot of research. This is in their files. There
were documents that we recovered from them as State attorneys general.
They discovered several things. They discovered first of all if they
build their younger market, then they are able to increase their
markets dramatically. That is what they did. They started targeting
younger people to start smoking. It is documented. It is in there. It
is something that is pretty astounding, when we think about it.
Listen to these figures. Almost 90 percent of the adult smokers began
at or before the age of 18. So it is the young people that are
starting, and they continue for their whole lives. Each day here in
America more than 3,000 kids become regular smokers. That is more than
1 million kids a year. Roughly one-third of them will eventually die
from tobacco-related disease.
Fifteen and one-half million kids are exposed to secondhand smoke at
home. More than 3 million of our children ages 12 to 17 are current
smokers, and 900 million packs of cigarettes are consumed by our
children a year. More than one-third of all these children who ever try
smoking a cigarette become regular daily smokers before leaving high
school.
That is what these tobacco companies knew all along. They knew if
they got young people addicted, that they would stay addicted for a
lifetime, and keep buying cigarettes, and their profits would keep
going up. It is a horrible story to tell, but it is out there and it is
it is documented. It is part of these tobacco lawsuits that the State
attorneys general brought.
Now, who stepped in to do something about this? Very little was done
at the Federal level in the 1990s. Did we see any other people stepping
out to do something about it? Private individuals hired attorneys and
went to court and tried to sue the tobacco companies.
The tobacco companies had never settled a case. They fought these
cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if they had to, and they
always defeated these poor little plaintiffs, many of whom had smoked
for 30, 40, or 50 years, and then had contracted lung cancer.
But in the 1990s, there were a group of attorneys general, first led
by Attorney General Mike Moore from Mississippi, who filed the first
lawsuit down there in Mississippi. It grew over the years, and
eventually we had 45 attorneys general join this lawsuit.
These lawsuits were pushed hard. They were fought hard. There was an
incredible battle going on in State courts with these lawsuits, but
eventually there was a master settlement for $240 billion. As part of
that master settlement, the tobacco companies agreed to do a number of
things: not target our kids, change their advertising, pay this $240
billion over 25 years.
My little State of New Mexico, this was the largest civil settlement
in the State of New Mexico for $1.2 billion. Many of the States had
something like that, settlements of that magnitude, so bringing in this
kind of money was very important to the State.
I would say at this point that it is very, very important, and this
is a side issue, but it is important that the States use this money on
health-related issues, rather than using it to build roads or for a tax
cut, or some of
[[Page H4003]]
the other things that they have used it for. These came out of health
care monies. These were Medicaid monies that were spent by the States,
it was the crux of the lawsuit, so these monies should go back into
health care.
I am proud to say that my State of New Mexico has put this in a trust
fund and is going to analyze this, and I think is going to head in the
right direction.
But the point I wanted to make here in the State attorneys general
filing these lawsuits is that we always wondered, when we would talk
about bringing our lawsuits, and when we would visit on the telephone
and in conferences about the cases, why the Federal Government was
never bringing a lawsuit. The crux of our claims were basically Federal
claims. They were Federal monies. They were State and Federal monies
mixed in, and many of them were 50/50 matches. Why did the Federal
Government never join us?
Eventually the Federal Government did, under President Clinton. They
realized that we had made enormous progress. They realized that the
settlement that had come about was in the interest of the public, so
they filed a lawsuit. I think they also realized that $240 billion was
left on the table, something in that range that they could have gotten.
So they joined in and they said, well, let us file a lawsuit, and they
did file that lawsuit. That is what we are here to talk about today is
where are we on that lawsuit, what is happening with it in this new
administration.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, a very controversial nominee over
there in the Senate, did a number of things on tobacco before he got
into. One of the things he did was lead the fight in the Senate against
the tobacco settlement, and he was very proud of the fact that he led
the fight against Senator McCain, who at the Federal level tried to
pass a bill and deal with the whole issue at the Federal level.
At one press conference, Attorney General Ashcroft was saying ``It
would be a big-government travesty at its biggest to use the tragedy of
tobacco as a smokescreen to cover the expansion of the Nanny State.''
In other cases, Senator Ashcroft at the time said things like this was
a frivolous lawsuit. He was the only one on the Senate Committee on
Commerce that voted against reporting the tobacco settlement bill that
was sponsored by Senator McCain.
So, basically, we have an individual that is in the Attorney
General's office. He is the lead negotiator on this case. He is
somebody that can make the decision one way or another as to how this
case is handled, what the strategy is to pursue in court, and whether
and on what terms it should be settled. That is really the issue that
is before us this evening.
We have been joined this evening by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr.
Udall). I know that he has an interest also in tobacco and these public
health problems that are out there. I yield to the gentleman from
Colorado (Mr. Udall) to see if he is interested in talking a little bit
about this current lawsuit and this current situation, and reflect on
his views.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the
gentleman from the State of New Mexico, for yielding to me and
providing me some time to talk about this very important issue tonight.
I also wanted to applaud his efforts as attorney general of the State
of New Mexico, and now as Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
As I was listening to the gentleman, I was thinking about all of the
viewers tonight who have children, and particularly daughters. I have
an 11-year-old daughter, a soon to be 11-year-old daughter. She is a
very important part of my life.
When I looked at the statistics that the gentleman has shared with us
in general, and then broke them down into the statistics that apply to
women and girls, I thought it was very striking. I want to share a few
of those with the Members tonight, and then talk a little bit about the
lawsuit situation, as well. It is stunning to think of some of these
statistics and what they really mean.
Smoking prevalence is higher among women with 9 to 11 years of
education than women with 13 to 15 years of education, and three times
higher than women with 16 or more years of education. Smoking among
girls and women has increased dramatically in the 1990s. From 1991 to
1999, smoking among high school girls increased from 27 percent to 34
percent.
A report published in the American Journal of Public Health shows
that girls have an easier time buying cigarettes than boys, even at the
youngest ages.
Now come the tragic statistics. In 1997, nearly 165,000 women died of
smoking-related diseases. Since the Surgeon General's Report on Women
and Smoking was released in 1980, about 3 million women in the U.S.
have died prematurely. Three million women have died prematurely of
smoking-related diseases.
As with men, smoking is related to heart disease and lung cancer, but
women smokers also face increased risks of cervical cancer and
osteoporosis. In the 1980s, lung cancer overtook breast cancer as the
leading cause of cancer death in women. Since 1950, lung cancer
mortality rates for women have increased 600 percent.
Cigarette smoking doubles the risk of coronary heart disease, and
accounts for more than 80 percent of lung cancers in women. Women also
have a more difficult time when they want to quit smoking. They have
lower cessation rates, and girls and women aged 12 to 24 are much more
likely to report being able to cut down on smoking than men and boys of
those same ages.
Females are significantly more likely than boys to report feeling
dependent on cigarettes, and are more likely to report feeling sad,
blue, or depressed during attempts to quit smoking.
I would remind the viewers that cigarette companies first began
targeting women in the 1920s. Up to that point, smoking among women was
not particularly socially acceptable, but they were savvy. They equated
smoking with freedom and emancipation.
Women continue to be a target of the cigarette companies. Cigarette
advertising and promotions use themes of empowerment and
sophistication. The cigarette companies, and I think my colleague, the
gentleman from New Mexico, touched on this, but they spent more than $8
billion in advertising and promotion in 1999, a 22 percent increase
over the $6.7 billion spent in 1998. This is the largest increase in
dollar terms since the Federal Trade Commission began tracking industry
sales in advertising in 1970.
Clearly, this points out that we have a real public health challenge,
and that it is one that we cannot turn our backs on. The gentleman from
New Mexico talked a little bit about the history of the lawsuits
brought by the States that was then taken up by the Federal Government.
I, too, want to express my concern that Attorney General Ashcroft,
given his past skepticism about the tobacco settlement bill, and
indeed, his work to stop the tobacco settlement bill, is now heading up
these efforts at the Federal level. I, too, want to lend my voice to
the calls for the Attorney General to establish a neutral and
independent review board to provide oversight of any proposed
settlement.
I think such a review board could be composed of a bipartisan slate
of attorneys general from the States who could act as neutral
arbitrators. I would hope that the Attorney General would recuse
himself, at a minimum, from the negotiation process.
This widespread use of tobacco is eating away at our society's
physical and financial health. We cannot bear, I think, to wait another
day before we continue these efforts to point out the dangers of this
real epidemic to our public health.
{time} 1930
I have been pleased to join my colleague, and at this point would
yield back to him for further comments.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. I very much want to thank the gentleman from
Colorado for those comments. I know that he and I and many others here
in the House of Representatives are going to be monitoring this very
closely and trying to make sure that Attorney General Ashcroft does
what is in the public interest if he stays on the case. I think we both
feel he should not be on the case.
Let me also talk a little bit about the gentleman's comments about
women. The women in America have
[[Page H4004]]
had a tragic situation when it comes to their relationship with
tobacco. The statistics are pretty astounding. And that is why when we
do these tobacco settlements, one of the conditions that should be in
there and one of the ways settlement monies can be used is to try to do
everything we can to educate people about quitting, offering them
cessation courses, doing counter advertising.
One of the States that has done an incredible job is the State of
California, which has put a tax on cigarettes and then taken that money
and advertised and showed everybody that is out there the danger of
tobacco, and they in particular target their advertising to young
people and say this is going to be your future. They show them lungs
that have been damaged. They show older individuals that have wrinkles
all over their faces because of premature aging from smoking and try to
let them know what kind of damage this is going to do. So it is
important that we protect everybody, protect women, and that we come up
with a variety of programs with these settlement monies to try to do
that.
The gentleman's comments on Attorney General Ashcroft, I think, are
crucial. And over and over again we see the statements he made as a
United States Senator before he got to be Attorney General. Listen to
his statement on FDA authority over the tobacco industry. This was from
a letter dated June 7, 2000. ``I believe that the most effective way to
combat nicotine addiction by people of all ages is not to allow the FDA
to regulate the tobacco industry.''
Well, that is just the opposite of what we ought to be doing.
President Clinton used FDA authority to get out there, to regulate, to
say that you cannot target young people in this country, and the courts
threw it out. So now we are in a situation where the FDA has no
regulatory authority. I have authored a bill in the Congress that gives
regulatory authority to the FDA. We have a number of sponsors on that,
and I think that is a good solid piece of legislation.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. If the gentleman will continue to yield.
Did now Attorney General Ashcroft, but then Senator Ashcroft, propose
a different system or did he just suggest we throw open the gates and
everybody have at it? I cannot imagine where we would be if we had that
kind of system up until this point, when after many years we have been
able to gather information and data that suggested the addictive
qualities and the detrimental qualities of nicotine and other
substances.
It strikes me that this is a very illustrative comment, also one that
causes me great concern.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. The gentleman's comment is correct, and when
Senator Ashcroft made that statement he was specifically targeting FDA
regulation. And really what he was saying, he was taking a very
libertarian approach; just let anybody do whatever they want and let
the private sector work. Let the tobacco companies get out there and
advertise all they want and get our young people addicted. And he is
saying the government should play no role. That, I think, is an
irresponsible position.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. If the gentleman will further yield, the
Attorney General is welcome to his own opinions. That is what makes
this country so great, the first amendment and all the other traditions
we have in our law and in our culture that encourages people to speak
out on their point of view. But I would suggest that that particular
set of sentiments is not held by the American people; that we have
decided as a country that tobacco should be regulated, just like we
regulate alcohol and other controlled substances.
That again points out the need to create an unbiased and bipartisan
group who would oversee the Federal Government's activities in regards
to this lawsuit. And this is not, incidentally, about Democrats or
Republicans. There are people who have contracted these diseases and
these problems in the 400,000 people the gentleman mentioned who are
Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Green Party. I am sure there are
even some anarchists in this group of people. This is not about
partisan advantage, but this is about doing the right thing and
representing or reflecting where the American people reside I think on
this issue, which is that there is more to be done.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. The gentleman is absolutely correct, and I
cannot emphasize enough that the lawsuits that were brought by State
attorneys general were brought by Democrats and Republicans. As the
gentleman knows, in his home State of Colorado, Attorney General Gale
Norton, who is now Secretary of the Interior, she brought a lawsuit in
the State of Colorado against the tobacco companies. She was part of
the master settlement. She, like everyone else, was very concerned
about the situation with women, the targeting of young people and
trying to addict them over a lifetime. So she was out there as a
Republican, very active, and there were many other Republican attorneys
general around the country that were involved. So this was a bipartisan
effort.
Back to this issue of Attorney General Ashcroft being in charge of
this lawsuit. I cannot, with all this evidence we have laid out there,
I cannot think of a worse individual to be in charge of the Nation's
lawsuit against the tobacco companies. It is really like putting the
fox in charge of the hen house. This gentleman has condemned these
lawsuits. He fought the tobacco settlement. He was the only one in the
committee. The vote in the committee was 19 to 1. He was the one in the
committee. And now we have him as Attorney General and he is the head
litigator.
One of the first things he did was to announce, well, I think we have
a weak lawsuit; we better settle. That is no way to go into a lawsuit.
It is no way to go into settlement negotiations. You have to get in
there and be tough with these companies, as the State attorneys general
were. He seems to be folding his tent before he has even started.
So this raises the whole question of conflict of interest, it raises
the question of an appearance problem, and it raises the whole issue of
bias. And I think one of the individuals that said it the best was the
person that wrote the editorial for The New York Times just a couple of
weeks ago when they said ``The Bush administration has shown a
troubling propensity for putting the interests of industrial campaign
backers before its duty to protect public health. The latest case in
point is the Justice Department's curious announcement that it will
attempt to settle the huge tobacco lawsuit against the tobacco industry
brought by the Clinton administration 2 years ago, explaining in part
that it thinks the case is weak. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a
major opponent of the lawsuit when he was in the Senate, included no
funding for the suit in his budget. So in that sense this week's action
is no surprise. Mr. Bush's spokesman explains that the President thinks
society is `too litigious,' and that it is preferable to `reach
agreements,' but abandoning the case is not the way to preserve
leverage.''
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. If the gentleman will yield, that is so true.
And in any contest you do not tell the other team before you take the
field or take the court or arrive at the golf course that you have a
weakened game that day and your team is not really prepared to compete.
And that is what lawsuits are. They are often the last resort option
that you have; but in many cases in our society, the judicial system
has proven to be an important place to play out further the debate that
is necessary in our society.
I was interested to also hear the comments about the Attorney General
saying there was not enough money to pursue the case. Well, the number
I have heard is about $23 million. That is real money. But when we look
at the cost of the lives and the cost that we have incurred societally
in Medicare and Medicaid and all of our private health systems, that is
a small amount of money to invest in doing right in all the areas the
gentleman has suggested.
I also find it interesting that perhaps it was suggested that there
was not any money available to pursue these lawsuits. But the Attorney
General himself is in charge of putting together his budget. So it is a
bit like saying I do not have any money, even though I am in charge of
how the money is allocated. How you spend money gives a sense of your
priorities. This clearly is not a priority for the Attorney General and
potentially, by extension, the President.
[[Page H4005]]
I think it is a priority for the American people. That is why we are
here tonight is to point out that there are thousands of American
citizens who think this lawsuit ought to be pursued and that, in the
end, this is not about lawsuits, it is not about money, it is not about
even keeping score, it is about our children in particular and about
the costs that tobacco use imposes on our society.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. I thank my colleague very much for those
comments. And let me follow on one of the thoughts that came out of
what the gentleman just said and this New York Times editorial I just
talked about.
There was a paragraph in there that I thought was particularly
interesting that should be illuminated on a little bit. People may
wonder why the Times said this. They said in the editorial, ``the
interests of industrial campaign backers before its duty to protect the
public health.'' They were accusing the Bush administration of showing
a troubling propensity to put the interests of industrial campaign
backers before the duty of public health.
So what are they talking about there? And I have been following this
very closely, because we all know when we run in campaigns and we are
active and we are out there and doing fund-raising the, fund-raising
can tell us a lot about actions and agenda and those kinds of things.
We have just finished here tonight a discussion of campaign finance
reform, and so if we look at the Center for Responsive Politics and
what they have researched on money in the last election, 83 percent, 83
percent of the tobacco contributions went to the Republican Party.
So when they talk about following contributors, I think that is what
they are talking about there. If we look at individual contributions,
$90,000 went specifically to the Bush campaign, only $8,000 to the Gore
campaign. So we are talking about another large amount in terms of
differences. A large disparity.
So the bottom line here is that President Bush has got to get a new
negotiator. I wrote what I considered a very congenial letter. The
gentleman mentioned it in his comments, a congenial letter to the
President saying this is a problem, this is a conflict, this has an
appearance, a serious appearance problem. This gentleman has come to
the job with a bias and you have to get a new negotiator to protect the
public interest.
Now, I do not have anybody in mind, and I would not be presumptuous
to tell the President who to pick as his negotiator. He clearly needs
someone he can trust, and he ought to replace the current Attorney
General and just have him step aside on this. But the other way, it
seems to me, with this whole cloud that is out there over this
settlement, to take care of this, is to involve the State attorneys
general.
There is nobody in the Nation with more credibility on this issue
than the State attorneys general. They sued the tobacco companies. They
were the first ones to bring them to the table. They were the very
first ones to get a settlement out of the tobacco companies. No other
lawyers had ever done this before. The tobacco companies always used to
wave their fingers at us and say, we fight to the end. If you file
against us, we are going to fight it to the end and we have never paid
a penny. Well, they paid $240 billion. So that is a pretty penny there,
I will tell you.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Again asking my colleague to yield, I would
note that the President certainly is a proponent of Federalism. He
certainly has taken the position in many cases that the States ought to
have an important role in a lot of the decisions that are made in our
country, and this suggestion that my colleague has brought up in his
letter, I think, fits his philosophical approach, and bringing in the
experts to work on behalf of all of the Americans and the attorney
generals as my colleague suggests, Democrat, Republican, covering the
whole political ideological spectrum, I think the gentleman mentioned
45 of them joined this case.
I would just urge the President to again look at the gentleman's
letter. I am hopeful that we will have a response from him sooner
rather than later.
{time} 1945
If I might, since we were talking about the costs, I might touch on
that one more time. It is easy to say these are other people's
problems. It is easy to say we are all adults, and if one decides to
smoke, they should bear some of the responsibility. There is some truth
in both of those statements, but we are talking about doing all we can
to make sure that children are not targeted. Children who begin smoking
are much more likely to remain smokers throughout their lives.
Even if we feel there is some responsibility that adults have, and we
do have those responsibilities, the costs that are incurred we all have
to bear. We can acknowledge those costs or turn a blind eye to those
costs.
The tobacco industry spent over $8 billion in 1999 on advertising and
promotional campaigns. That is $22 million a day spent on these
campaigns.
Now there is $89 billion in total annual private and public health
care expenditures caused by tobacco use; $17 billion annual Federal and
State Medicaid payments directly caused by tobacco use; $20.5 billion
Federal Government Medicare expenditures each year that are attributed
to tobacco use; and $8 billion other Federal Government tobacco-caused
health care costs in particular through our Veterans Administration
health care.
There is $2.1 billion in addition annual expenditures through Social
Security survivors insurance, the SSI program, for kids who have lost
one or both parents through smoking-caused death.
Mr. Speaker, one that really catches my attention, $1.4 billion to $4
billion in additional annual expenditures for health and developmental
problems of infants caused by mothers who smoke and for those infants
who were exposed to secondhand smoke after they were born and, of
course, during pregnancy.
These are very significant costs that we all bear as a society, and
this is why I think it is very important that we continue to pursue the
resolution of this situation. We ask the tobacco companies to carry
their fair share.
I was curious to hear a little more, if it fits the rest of the
gentleman's comments, about what the State of New Mexico has done about
the monies from the settlement. You talked about California, but I am
interested in how we can reduce the size of these statistics that I
have just shared.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Colorado for his comments. The State of New Mexico is planning to get
about $1.2 billion under the master settlement. That is the largest
civil settlement in the State of New Mexico. The way that this
settlement was worked out, it will flow in over 25 years. We do not
have all $1.2 billion at this time. We are getting smaller amounts, and
they balloon up over time.
Mr. Speaker, let me talk about some of the proposals that were out
there and then what they are actually doing now, and maybe we can get
into a discussion on that. First of all, the public health community
came forward, many of these cancer doctors, the oncologists came
forward, and the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Society,
all of them came forward and said, we need to work on specifically how
we spend these dollars.
They came up with what I thought were some very good recommendations.
First of all, we could start a trust fund. One of the best
recommendations, and I was very supportive of this and worked with my
legislature, set up a trust fund and try to get the trust fund to the
level that it was way up there in dollars so we could then use the
principal rather than using the capital. If you took a lot of this
money and put it into a trust fund, then there could be a perpetual
flow of money to deal with the tobacco issues.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, so the gentleman is suggesting to
treat it as an endowment for our children's future, and direct the
return and the interest off the endowment into these efforts, and it
would be a very conservative way to proceed, and that would ensure that
those monies were there into perpetuity for use of citizens in the
gentleman's home State?
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is correct. And
what we were trying to do in recommending some kind of trust fund was
to say these issues are not going away. The tobacco companies are
advertising, and they are still out there. We prevented them from
targeting kids, but
[[Page H4006]]
they are still out there selling cigarettes. We know how many kids;
3,000 kids are starting smoking every day. The idea is get a trust
fund, have those monies, the principal on your trust fund, work toward
preventing that.
One of the most effective things that can be done is
counteradvertising, and that is one of the recommendations that we were
making. Go on television, go out with billboards, and any information
you can give to the public about the dangers of smoking and try to
target it to specific audiences and have it be relevant to those
audiences.
After somebody gets addicted, they start when they are young, one of
the next issues is how do you get them off. There are cessation
programs. There are a variety of programs to help people wean
themselves from cigarettes; and those could also be funded. Give people
a chance to get themselves off of tobacco.
The thing that is deplorable to me is that many of the States have
not taken this approach, have not headed down this road. New Mexico is
not completely down this road either. They have taken the money and
just let it flow into the general fund and spent on whatever comes up.
Some States have taken the money and built roads.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It is pretty rare that a
State has a huge lump sum of money, anywhere from 5 to 6 to 1.2 or $10
billion flowing into the State over 25 years. And if you are creative,
inventive, you can really do, I think, some good things as far as
public health and as far as our children.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, in the State of Colorado we had
that debate, and our Governor was very involved. If memory serves me
right, we directed a significant amount of money into the very programs
that have been created in New Mexico, and we have directed some into
literacy programs and other programs which have been designated as
worthy.
I have mixed feelings. I think a strong case could be made that all
of the money ought to be used in the way the gentleman has suggested,
where the principal is taken, and it generates a return, and all that
can be done over a period of time is done to not only begin to reduce
smoking, but eventually reach a point where none of our children start
smoking at an age before they really understand the consequences.
Mr. Speaker, if an adult wants to utilize tobacco at some point, that
is his or her right to do that. But as the gentleman points out, the
statistics are staggering as to how many children start. They then
carry that habit and addiction on into their adult years.
I was noting, too, the Attorney General mentioned that he had a
concern that it would be a big government travesty to use the tragedy
of tobacco as a smoke screen to cover the expansion of the nanny state.
Mr. Speaker, I guess I would beg to differ with him, and I think many
Americans would, that this is an appropriate place for government
regulation. This is an appropriate place for all of us through our
government to come together and make sure that our children are not
exposed to the great dangers of tobacco.
Abraham Lincoln, the founder of the Republican Party, suggested that
we do together through government what cannot be done solely as
individuals.
It is clear that the power and the resources of the tobacco companies
are enormous, and that the role that government can play in providing a
counterbalance is crucial. Our free enterprise system provides for a
lot of freedom, but it also asks corporations and large entities to act
responsibly. I think that is the purpose at the heart of the litigation
that has been brought, and I think that is again why I share the
concerns that the Justice Department needs to look for a broader-based
approach. It needs to involve other constituencies on a bipartisan
basis in its pursuit of the important lawsuit that we have been
discussing tonight.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield,
there are two important points here. Number one, get a new negotiator.
There are plenty of former Attorneys General, there are State attorneys
general, there are people in the government. The President should have
another negotiator in place.
Secondly, how do you give credibility to this whole process? The
process right now has a big cloud over it. There are serious questions
that have arisen. I think involving the States attorneys general, a
group of attorneys general that can come in and say, we are headed
towards a settlement now, is this a good settlement. Then they can
visit privately with the administration. Also in the end they should be
able to make public pronouncements about the validity of the lawsuit,
the size of the settlement, what was extracted in the settlement. There
is no group in this country that knows more about what should be in a
settlement than State attorneys general.
I would hope that not only would he remove Attorney General Ashcroft
from this, but he would also focus on some independent oversight by
State attorneys general. I certainly believe that with the combination
of those two items, that we would be able to have a good outcome here.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I
would appeal to all of our colleagues in the House, all 435 of us, to
weigh in with the President, request that he consider what I thought
was a very thoughtful request on the part of the gentleman from New
Mexico, and I think other colleagues would join the gentleman if they
knew the extent to which this is an important issue facing us.
Mr. Speaker, it is an opportunity. It is arguably a health care
crisis, but it also presents us with a real opportunity. I hope
colleagues who have been here and have listened to our special order
tonight would consider also making their own pitch to the President
that this is a worthy undertaking and one that will be remembered not
just in the near future if we do it right, but will be remembered for
decades to come; that we got ahold of this public health problem and
that we did something about it when it was appropriate and when our
kids are really what are at risk here.
So I want to commend the gentleman for providing the leadership in
this important area, and for after 8 years as attorney general and now
3 years in this body is continuing the good work on behalf of our
children.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentleman from
Colorado for his leadership on this issue and caring about our children
in this country.
Mr. Speaker, I will say as we wrap up here that these are important
issues to the American people.
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