[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 82 (Wednesday, June 3, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5988-S5989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           FAMILY SMOKING PREVENTION AND TOBACCO CONTROL ACT

  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to 
support and pass the legislation that is currently before the Senate, 
and that is the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The 
Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act would implement 
important marketing restrictions on tobacco products and especially on 
the marketing practices that have been shown to increase tobacco use 
among our Nation's young people.
  I, like so many of my colleagues, some of whom are experiencing at 
the same time I am, and some who have already been through it--I am 
just beginning the teen years with my children. My twin boys will be 
turning 13 in a couple of weeks. Let me tell you, the pressure on our 
young people across this country is very real and very tough.
  What we are talking about in this bill--the authority--is absolutely 
critical. The tobacco industry has a long and disturbing history of 
marketing its products to appeal to young people. Last year, the 
National Cancer Institute published a comprehensive report on tobacco 
marketing that documented the powerful influence that tobacco marketing 
has on our children.
  The report found that ``the evidence base indicates a casual 
relationship between tobacco advertising and increased levels of 
tobacco initiation and continued consumption'' and that even brief 
exposure to tobacco advertising influences kids' attitudes and 
perceptions about smoking, as well as their intentions to smoke.
  The tobacco industry spends more than $13 billion per year to promote 
their products. Many of these marketing efforts directly reach our 
children. I want to share with folks an ad. Here is an ad that appeared 
in a convenience store in Delaware. Yes, it says what you think it 
says. It is a back-to-school special for Camel cigarettes--a back-to-
school special.
  I have to say, I so enjoyed when my kids were in elementary school 
and taking them to the store to get their crayons and their pencils and 
their notebooks. I think about now even in their teen years, we go and 
maybe we get a couple of new outfits, we talk about graph paper and 
what they are going to learn and all the exciting things. We prepare 
them for school, getting back to school. We are ending up school right 
now, but we will go through it in the fall again. It is unbelievable to 
me that we would run ads: back to school, get your bargain, here it is, 
a pack of cigarettes.
  The industry also reaches our kids by saturating convenience stores, 
drugstores, and gas stations with tobacco advertisements, often placing 
ads and products near the candy and gum displays, or using other visual 
tricks such as bright colors and also through sponsorship of sports and 
entertainment events which are obviously what kids are interested in so 
often in the sports arena and other things with which they are 
involved.
  Tobacco companies know that almost all new smokers begin as kids. 
They carefully design their products to make them more attractive to 
kids. For example, in this ad, flavors are used to make the smoke less 
harsh, more flavorful, and easier for kids to smoke.
  We see in this ad, R. J. Reynolds has heavily marketed products with 
fruit

[[Page S5989]]

flavors such as Twista Lime, Warm Winter Toffee, and Winter Mocha Mint. 
Bright colorful ads for these cigarettes have appeared in magazines 
that are very popular with our children.
  Who do we think candy and fruit-flavored products are for? Certainly 
they are not for the adults who have been smoking Marlboros or Camels 
all their lives. Survey evidence shows what we would expect: that these 
candy and fruit-flavored products are far more popular with our young 
people than among adults.
  Targeting our children like this is absolutely unacceptable--
unacceptable for the health of our children and for the well-being of 
our health care system. Here we are debating health care reform at a 
time when we realize that it is 18 percent of our GDP, and over the 
next 10 years health care is going to be one-fifth of our economy. To 
be advertising to our children to start something that we know is going 
to be detrimental to their health is absolutely unacceptable.
  If we are ever going to address the No. 1 preventable cause of death 
in the United States, we need to provide the FDA with the authority to 
restrict tobacco companies marketing to our children.
  While progress has been made in the last decade, youth tobacco use 
remains far too high. More than 20 percent of high school students in 
my home State of Arkansas smoke, and more than 18 percent of Arkansas's 
high school boys use smokeless tobacco. Each year, a staggering 13,100 
Arkansas kids try cigarettes for the first time, and another 3,900 
additional kids become new and regular daily smokers. Ninety percent of 
all adult smokers began smoking in their teen years. Tobacco companies 
know they have to attract kids to be able to survive. They know that if 
they get kids hooked, then they will have those adult smokers, and 
their marketing efforts have paid off.

  According to recent studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention, more than 80 percent of kids smoke the three most 
heavily advertised brands. While tobacco companies claim they do not 
market to our children, they are surely doing a good job of getting 
kids to use their products.
  We simply must do more to protect our children from the tobacco 
company advertising and promotion. Effective regulation of the tobacco 
industry must provide FDA with the authority to restrict tobacco 
company marketing to children. That is one of the key goals of the 
Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Act. It imposes those specific 
marketing restrictions on tobacco products, restrictions on those forms 
of tobacco marketing I mentioned earlier that have been shown to 
increase youth tobacco use.
  Even more importantly, the bill gives the FDA the flexibility to 
further restrict tobacco marketing so it can respond to the inevitable 
innovative attempts by the tobacco companies to get around specific 
restrictions. The restrictions on marketing included in the FDA tobacco 
bill are critical to any effort to prevent kids from starting to smoke 
and reduce the toll caused by tobacco.
  Even though tobacco companies claim they have stopped intentionally 
marketing to kids, they continue their tradition of designing products 
that appeal explicitly to new users. The large majority--and we cannot 
ignore it--the large majority of those new users are our children.
  I mentioned that my children are about to be teens, and as the mother 
of twins about to be teens, I know that parents want to do all they can 
to protect their children. Children are faced with so much in today's 
world, whether it is violence, whether it is issues such as this, 
whether it is peer pressure. Our children are faced with many things. 
We want to protect them. We want to help them learn to wear seatbelts 
and bicycle helmets. We want to teach them all that we can, the skills 
they need in life so they can remain safe and healthy.
  I look at the restrictions we put on our children each day to make 
sure they are wearing those helmets, to make sure they are not on the 
computer too much, to make sure they are using the computer safely. All 
of these things we do as parents to ensure we are doing our job to keep 
our children as safe as we possibly can.
  We also need to protect our children from tobacco companies--their 
advertising and promotion. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco 
Control Act does this. It would end special protection for the tobacco 
industry, and it would be safeguarding our children and creating a 
healthier nation in the process.
  Again, I encourage my colleagues to work with me and all of the other 
Senators working on this bill to move this bill forward on behalf of 
our children, certainly on behalf of the health care needs of this 
country but, most importantly, for parents who are trying so hard to 
ensure their kids will get off on the right foot and that they will 
learn to make wise decisions and will not be faced with these types of 
temptations and others to stray in a way that is going to be unhealthy 
for them and unhealthy for their future.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to reserve the remaining 
majority time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona is 
recognized.

                          ____________________