[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 9, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6341-S6342]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           FAMILY SMOKING PREVENTION AND TOBACCO CONTROL ACT

  Mr. DODD. I thank the Chair. I will try and be brief on this. I know 
I have spoken at some length about the bill before us, the Family 
Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. I wish to begin by again 
thanking our colleagues who voted yesterday to allow us to move forward 
by supporting the cloture motion. It took a bipartisan effort and I am 
grateful to colleagues, both in the majority and the minority, for 
lending their support to that effort. I am also pleased we are having 
an opportunity to vote on the Burr-Hagan amendment. There were some 
questions raised as to whether that amendment would be permissible 
under a postcloture environment from a parliamentary standpoint. As I 
told my friend from North Carolina, Senator Burr, even though I 
disagree with his amendment, I would vote against a point of order if 
one were raised against it so he would have a chance to make his case. 
His State is going to be affected by this decision we are making. As I 
recall, I think he told me there are some 12,000 to 15,000 tobacco 
farmers in North Carolina, hard-working families who have been in the 
business for generations. This will have an impact on them. It may not 
be as dramatic as some suggest, but it certainly will have a negative 
impact if we are successful in reducing the amount of smoking and use 
of tobacco products by young children.
  I am pleased my colleague from North Carolina has had a chance to 
make his case, along with his colleague from North Carolina, Senator 
Hagan.
  Having said I would support his right to be heard, now I wish to take 
a few minutes to express why I support the underlying bill. This bill 
has been supported over the years by a substantial number in this body, 
as well as in the other body, the House of Representatives--as I 
pointed out in the past, this matter, which has been under 
consideration for almost a decade, has not become law because neither 
House of Congress has adopted the legislation in the same Congress. We 
have ended up with the Senate passing a bill, the other House passing a 
bill, but never in the same Congress. So for all of these years, the 
Food and Drug Administration has not been able to regulate tobacco 
products.
  We are about to change that if we, in fact, reject the Burr amendment 
and several others that are pending and give the Food and Drug 
Administration the power, the authority, to regulate the sale, 
production, and marketing of tobacco products, particularly to young 
children. So for the first time, the FDA will have this authority and 
put in place tough restrictions that for far too long have been absent. 
This will provide support for families when it comes to how cigarettes 
are marketed to their children.
  I am sure my colleagues are tired of hearing me speaking over the 
last several weeks about the number of young people who start smoking 
every day. We have been at this matter now for about 2 or 3 weeks, 
considering the floor action, as well as the action in the HELP 
Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction. You can do the math 
yourself: Over 20 days, 3,000 to 4,000 children every day starting to 
smoke while we have been deliberating this piece of legislation. 
Needless to say, I don't know of a single person in this country with 
an ounce of sense who wants that many children who begin this habit to 
continue. I don't know of anybody with any sense at all who believes 
our country is better off if day after day we allow an industry to 
market products designed specifically to appeal to young people, 
knowing what danger and harm it causes. Four hundred thousand of our 
fellow citizens expire, die every year because of smoking-related 
illnesses--400,000 people. That is more than the number of people who 
lose their lives as a result of automobile accidents, AIDS, alcohol

[[Page S6342]]

abuse, illegal drug abuse, and violent crimes with guns. All of those 
combined do not equal the number of deaths that occur because of 
people's use of tobacco and tobacco products. That does not include the 
number of people who lead very debilitated lives, who are stricken with 
emphysema or related pulmonary illnesses that fundamentally alter their 
lives and the lives of their families.
  I apologize to my colleagues for continuing to recite these numbers, 
but I pray and hope these numbers may have some impact on those who 
wonder if every aspect of the bill makes the most sense or not. None of 
us should ever claim perfection, but we have spent a lot of time on 
this, a lot of consideration on this. There are 1,000 organizations, 
faith-based, State organizations--leading organizations dealing with 
lung cancer and related problems and they are all speaking with one 
voice. They are telling us to pass this bill, pass this bill, and allow 
finally for the FDA to be able to control the marketing, the selling, 
and the production of these tobacco products.
  Absent any action by this Congress, more than 6 million children who 
are alive today will die from smoking. Mr. President, 1 out of 5 
children from my State of Connecticut smokes today, and 76,000 
children, we are told by health care professionals, will die 
prematurely because of their addiction to tobacco.
  As I mentioned earlier, we are on the eve of passing major health 
care reform legislation. The centerpiece of that bill, as I hear my 
Republican friends and Democratic friends talk about it, is prevention. 
That is the one piece about which there is a great deal of unanimity. 
How can we deal with health care reform? The best way to treat a 
disease is to have it never happen in the first place. This bill may do 
more in the area of prevention, if adopted, than anything else we may 
include in the health care bill in the short term. The estimates are 
that 11 percent of young people would not begin the habit of smoking if 
this bill is adopted. Imagine 11 percent of the young people not 
smoking of that 3,000 to 4,000 every day who start. That in itself 
would be a major achievement.
  My friend from North Carolina, Senator Burr, does not give authority 
to the FDA. The FDA is 100 years old. His bill creates a completely new 
agency, an untested agency, to oversee tobacco products. But the FDA is 
the right agency because it is the only agency that has the regulatory 
experience and scientific experience and the combination of that with a 
public health mission. Unlike the Kennedy bill, the underlying bill, 
the Burr substitute fails to provide adequate resources to do the job. 
In the first 3 years, if the Burr substitute is adopted, it would 
allocate only one-quarter of the funding allocated in Senator Kennedy's 
proposal. The Burr substitute fails to give the authority to remove 
harmful ingredients in cigarettes, which the Kennedy bill would do. It 
doesn't go far enough in protecting children and has weaker and less 
effective health warnings as well.
  I say respectfully to my friend, setting up and creating a whole new 
agency, providing a fraction of the funding necessary to get it done, 
and providing inadequate resources in order to support these efforts is 
not the step we ought to be taking. All of us can agree that the FDA is 
basically the agency we charge with the responsibility of regulating 
everything we consume and ingest, including the products ingested by 
our pets. The FDA has jurisdiction over your cat food, dog food, and 
what your parakeet may have, but your child's use of tobacco is not 
regulated by anybody. Your child's safety, in many ways, is being less 
protected than that of a household pet. That needs to change.
  For a decade, we have debated this. We have been through countless 
arguments. Now we have come down to the moment as to whether this 
Congress, in a bipartisan fashion, as we did yesterday, will say enough 
is enough. We have come to the end of the debate.
  Mr. President, 400,000 people are losing their lives every day, and 
3,000 to 4,000 children are starting to smoke, a thousand of whom will 
be addicted for life, and one-third of that number will die because of 
the use of these products. That is over with. The marketing, the 
production, as well as the selling of these products has to come to an 
end. This is the best way to save money, if you are not impressed with 
the ethics and morality of the issue.
  This is a self-inflicted wound we impose on ourselves as a country, 
knowing the damage it causes, the costs it imposes, the hardships, the 
horror, and the sorrow it brings to families. I don't know a single 
person who smokes and wants their child to begin that habit. If they 
could stand here collectively--the families across this country who are 
smokers--they would say with one voice: Pass this bill. Please do 
everything you can to see to it that my child doesn't begin that habit.
  Ninety percent of smokers start as kids, we know that. So we need to 
change how we regulate these products. That is what this bill does. It 
has had tremendous support from our friends, both Republicans and 
Democrats, over the years. We have never done it together, and we are 
on the brink of doing that and making a significant change in our 
country for the better. It is long overdue.
  When the vote occurs on the Burr amendment, I urge my colleagues to 
vote against the amendment. I want to do everything I can to help those 
farmers. The bill makes a difference in providing real help to the 
farmers. I see my friend from Kentucky. He knows I went to law school 
there, and he knows I have an affection for the people there. We owe it 
to them to provide real help so they can get back on their feet. I say 
to my friend from North Carolina, and others, I know what it means to 
have an industry in your State face these kinds of challenges, but 
clearly the challenge to our Nation is to begin to reduce the number of 
children who smoke and to save lives every year. I say respectfully 
that there is no more paramount issue for our Nation as a whole.
  I urge my colleagues to reject the Burr amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the ranking member of the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, Senator Sessions, Senator Kyl, and I will take a 
few moments to discuss the pending Supreme Court nomination and the 
proceedings leading up to that. I have notified the Democratic floor 
staff that it might slightly delay the 4:20 vote. I find that not 
objectionable on the other side.
  I would inform our colleagues that we are going to proceed as if in 
morning business. I ask unanimous consent that we may do so.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. It will not cause much of a delay on the 4:20 vote.
  Senator Sessions is up and will be first to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized.

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