[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 9, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6352-S6354]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           FAMILY SMOKING PREVENTION AND TOBACCO CONTROL ACT

  Ms. SNOWE. Madam President, I am proud to join my colleagues in 
expressing first and foremost my admiration for Senator Kennedy, for 
his longstanding, vigorous leadership, which has been the impetus 
behind this legislation. Undeniably, Senator Kennedy continues to serve 
as the strongest of champions on so many matters relating to health 
care, and I am certainly,

[[Page S6353]]

as we all are, grateful for his tireless contributions to this major 
initiative. I also commend Senator Dodd, who has been guiding this 
legislation here in the Senate, and I certainly appreciate all of his 
efforts to make sure that this legislation becomes a reality. I also 
appreciate the public health agencies and advocates who work 
ceaselessly to address these serious public health problems associated 
with tobacco, as we all well know, and who are committed to the task of 
reducing youth smoking. I certainly want to commend States such as 
Maine that have used their funds from the 1998 tobacco settlement to 
reduce smoking rates.
  First and foremost, it is regrettable as the first decade of the 21st 
century draws to a close that we are even having this debate when the 
American Lung Association reports that cigarette smoke contains more 
than 4,800 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer, and that 
smoking is directly responsible for approximately 90 percent of lung 
cancer deaths, and that 8.6 million people in the United States have at 
least one serious illness caused by smoking.
  In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 
that smoking costs the country $96 billion a year in health care costs 
and another $97 billion a year in lost productivity.
  It didn't have to be this way. Looking back over the last several 
Congresses, I can tell you that many of my Senate colleagues have 
engaged on this issue of tobacco usage's ill effects for the better 
part of a decade. I well recall during the 105th Congress at least five 
comprehensive tobacco policy bills which were introduced in the Senate. 
The Senate Commerce Committee, on which I have served, held no fewer 
than 10 hearings on issues ranging from how to implement the tobacco 
settlement to protecting children from the health risks of becoming a 
smoker to reviewing marketing and labeling restrictions that were under 
consideration at the time.
  In 1997, Senator McCain, who then chaired the Commerce Committee, 
introduced the National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act, 
which contained many of the very same safeguards as the measure 
currently before us. While on the one hand it is irrefutable that 
protecting youth from the harms of smoking and ensuring tobacco 
products are manufactured under high standards was the correct course 
of action in 1997, how is it conceivable it has taken 12 years to get 
this right? Why, after the first warning 25 years ago by the Surgeon 
General on the hazards of smoking, has that message not been translated 
into law?
  Why is Congress taking this action now? What has changed since 1997 
to prompt this renewed action? For one, there has been a justifiable 
drumbeat of outrage over fraudulent findings that has grown louder by 
the decade as the tobacco industry has been less than forthcoming, and 
at times deceitful, in providing consumers with information to make 
informed decisions about smoking.
  In fact, in August of 2006, a district court judge found that several 
tobacco companies intentionally manipulated information, lied, and 
conspired ``to bring new, young and hopefully long-lived smokers into 
the market in order to replace those who die or quit.'' Furthermore, 
the Harvard School of Public Health study in 2008 found that cigarette 
companies strategically manipulated menthol levels in cigarettes to 
attract and addict young people. It is bad enough Congress could have 
acted and chose not to do so, but what makes the situation even worse 
is that, in the interim, tobacco companies have ratcheted up their 
marketing campaigns.

  Congress is tackling the tobacco issue again in the wake of 
discovering how tobacco manufacturers add substances to cigarettes to 
increase their addictiveness, enhance the taste--and this is 
unbelievable--making them more palatable to children. Menthol makes an 
individual's airways less reactive to the harsh effects of smoking, and 
ammonia is often added to speed the delivery of nicotine to the 
smoker's brain.
  That is not to say we haven't made progress in trying to limit some 
of the negative health effects of cigarette smoking. We have. Since 
1983, the proportion of Americans who smoke has declined from 30 to 24 
percent, and since the landmark 1964 Surgeon General report, our 
knowledge of health risks of tobacco has expanded greatly. And yet, 
without substantial initiatives by Congress, in the past 10 years the 
rate of tobacco use has not dropped but merely stabilized. Today, 
approximately 1 in 5 youth and adults smokes regularly.
  The first step toward addressing the enormous toll taken on our 
Nation by smoking is to equip the Federal Government with the tools it 
requires to hold purveyors of tobacco to account. For too long, there 
has been a vacuum in authority when it comes to regulating smoking at 
the Federal level. Our bill, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco 
Control Act, would create the kind of restrictions that the Food and 
Drug Administration unsuccessfully tried to impose on the tobacco 
industry in 2000. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court held that Congress 
had not yet granted the FDA explicit authority to regulate tobacco. The 
purpose of the FDA restrictions was to prevent the tobacco industry 
from marketing its products to kids or to create products that are 
specifically attractive to children, such as flavored cigarettes. 
Granting FDA the authority to protect the children from these 
potentially deadly products is paramount. Thus, the legislation before 
us would allow regulation of manufacturers of tobacco products in order 
to ensure standards of content, label, and marketing.
  Under our bill, the Secretary of Health and Human Services would be 
authorized to develop regulations that impose guidelines on the 
advertising and promotion of a tobacco product consistent with and to 
the full extent permitted by the first amendment to the Constitution. 
These regulations would be based on whether they would be appropriate 
for the protection of public health. It is imperative that we provide 
the FDA the flexibility to respond to inevitable tobacco industry 
attempts to circumvent restrictions, while acknowledging the rights of 
the tobacco industry to sell its products to consenting adults.
  While this bill allows that informed adults ought to be able to 
purchase tobacco products, we must also understand that many smokers 
want to quit smoking. In 2006, 44 percent of smokers stopped smoking at 
least 1 day in the preceding year because they were trying to quit 
smoking completely. Undoubtedly, for some, cessation is more difficult, 
and as they struggle to limit their risk, those individuals will seek 
out products which they understand to be less hazardous, such as lower 
tar and nicotine products. While these actions are admirable, their 
benefits are indisputably limited. That is partially because the 
tobacco industry has waged a marketing campaign to convince consumers 
that they can continue to smoke and mitigate the negative health 
impacts of smoking by choosing alternatives, such as light, low tar, 
and low nicotine cigarettes. Again, an FDA with the authority to 
regulate the production and marketing of tobacco products is the most 
viable answer.
  Our approach would also ensure that the scientific expertise of the 
FDA is applied to appropriately regulate tobacco. Current smokers 
deserve to learn more about the products they consume. Additionally, we 
must have much improved marketing oversight, so that children and 
adults are not targeted with false or deceptive advertising of a 
dangerous product.
  To that end, I was pleased to join with Senator Lautenberg in 
sponsoring legislation that would end the fraud of allowing the tobacco 
industry to perpetuate the Orwellian idea of the safer cigarette. The 
Truth in Cigarette Labeling Act was a bill Senator Lautenberg and I 
introduced to prohibit the cigarette companies from using the ``FTC 
method'' for measuring tar and nicotine, which had been found to be a 
deceptive method of presenting data on tar and nicotine exposure 
through smoking.
  Thankfully, the Federal Trade Commission agreed to implement the 
Lautenberg-Snowe bill by not allowing tobacco companies to label their 
products with low tar, low nicotine, and light. To augment that effort, 
Senator Lautenberg and I sent a letter to the FTC supporting the 
decision to curtail these deceptive marketing tactics and finally 
holding cigarette producers to higher standards in advertising their 
products.

[[Page S6354]]

  As I stated at the outset, since 2000, efforts at smoking reduction 
have largely atrophied. A Harris poll released just last year 
demonstrated that after two decades of reduction in smoking rates, 
progress has stalled. In 2009, do we really want to say that one in 
four Americans smoking is an acceptable statistic, and that we will 
turn a blind eye to the fact that all too many young Americans have 
taken up smoking? Do we really want to say that although in the last 12 
years America created YouTube, the IPod, the Iphone and more--yet we 
can't keep children from smoking altogether or substantially lower the 
instances of smoking by adults. Our response must be nothing less than 
the bill we are championing today.
  And make no mistake, time is of the essence. The reality is the 
average smoker begins at age 19. So many individuals take up tobacco 
use before they can ever legally purchase the product. And let there be 
no mistake about it--our youth are targeted to be the next generation 
of tobacco consumers.
  In fact, in my home State of Maine, 1 in 7 high school students 
currently smokes, and each year, 1,600 youth become new daily smokers. 
And most concerning, an estimated 27,000 youth now living in Maine will 
die prematurely from health consequences related to cigarette smoking, 
and health care costs in Maine directly caused by smoking have reached 
a whopping $602 million annually.
  Maine has responded with a comprehensive tobacco prevention and 
control program known as the Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine which 
is funded with proceeds from the tobacco settlement. And I am proud to 
say that Maine is among the States that have maximized their tobacco 
settlement money for the purpose of reducing smoking rates and easing 
related health problems. That is why Maine has established Healthy 
Maine Partnerships, including 31 local partnerships that span the 
entire geography of Maine, which are engaging in more than 156 policy 
and environmental change efforts to reduce tobacco use, increase 
physical activity, and encourage healthy eating at local schools, 
worksites, hospitals, recreation centers and other community sites.
  While I commend the efforts of States such as Maine in attempting to 
stem the tide of youth smoking, what we have not yet dealt with is the 
known practices of tobacco companies marketing directly to our 
children. The fact is, the industry has not only targeted children as 
its new customers, but it has designed products for them as well. Even 
as one prohibition is imposed--such as restricting the use of cartoon 
characters like ``Joe Camel''--we find that the tobacco industry 
devises a new scheme. We witnessed the new flavored products in 
packaging which was designed to appeal to a new generation. Many 
``child-oriented'' flavors have been developed including such varieties 
as chocolate, vanilla, berry, lime and the package I am holding--
coconut-and-pineapple-flavored Kauai Koala.
  Although State-level bills to ban flavored cigarettes have been 
introduced in New York, Minnesota, West Virginia, Connecticut, 
Illinois, North Carolina, and Texas--a move in the right direction to 
be sure--there is more we must do. It is time for Congress to act to 
protect our youth--to safeguard our children and in the process send a 
clear message to those in the tobacco industry that we will not permit 
them to recruit our children at increasingly younger ages to become 
lifelong cigarette smokers.
  Our bill will achieve what we failed to accomplish 12 years ago, and 
we can ill afford to allow this opportunity to pass. I urge my 
colleagues to join me in supporting this timely and necessary 
legislation to protect the health of all Americans, especially the 
millions of children at risk of becoming cigarette smokers.
  I yield the floor.

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