[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 13120-13125]
[From the U.S. 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

[[Page 13121]]

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 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 Office. 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

[[Page 13122]]

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 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.''

[[Page 13123]]


  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.
  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

[[Page 13124]]

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 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.

[[Page 13125]]


  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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