[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 12 (Monday, March 25, 1996)]
[Pages 531-534]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids

March 20, 1996

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Alan. And I want to thank the Lung 
Association,

[[Page 532]]

the Heart Association, the Cancer Society, all the physicians who are 
here today with the various medical groups. Dr. Bristow, it's good to 
see you. And I thank all of you for being here.
    I thank Secretary Shalala and Commissioner Kessler and CDC Director 
David Satcher for their leadership. I want to thank someone who is not 
here, but who had a lot to do with this effort; I thank the Vice 
President, who lost his own beloved sister to lung cancer, for his 
strength and leadership in this endeavor.
    Normally, I don't think the people of America should give the 
President an award for anything, because the President's job is award 
enough. It is an uncommon gift with a great responsibility. But to tell 
you the truth, I'm kind of tickled about this today, because I admired, 
indeed I loved Mike Synar very much. He was a good man and a brave man 
who gave the rest of us a great deal of energy and hope and direction. 
And our country could do with a few more like him, people that just rear 
back and stand up and do the right thing. And if it doesn't work out, 
they just laugh and go on and don't expect any kind of a blue ribbon or 
award at the end of the day.
    When I gave the State of the Union Address and spoke about the 
challenges facing our country as we move into the next century, I said, 
and I repeat, that our first challenge--not the Government, the people's 
first challenge--is to strengthen our families and cherish all our 
children and give every single one of our young people the childhood 
that he or she deserves. One of the most important things we can do in 
meeting that challenge is to protect our children from what is rapidly 
becoming the single greatest threat to their health: cigarette smoking 
and tobacco addition.
    This is, like other challenges, as Secretary Shalala so eloquently 
said, a challenge we have to meet together. To be sure, Government has a 
role to play. I want to acknowledge the presence of two other Members of 
Congress here today who stood shoulder to shoulder with Mike Synar, our 
good friend Congressman Dick Durbin from Illinois, who won his primary 
for the United States Senate last night. Congratulations, Dick. It is a 
measure of his commitment to the issue that I talked to him after 
midnight his time last night, but he suited up and showed up here today 
anyway. We thank you. And Congressman Marty Meehan from Massachusetts, 
thank you, sir, for being here and for your good work here as well.
    I thank the parents of America who have become increasingly 
sensitive to this issue and are working hard to teach their children. I 
thank the young people here who are working hard to reach out to their 
peers and who often can have more influence on their peers than their 
parents or the President. I thank the athletes and the entertainers who 
are committed to being role models, the businesses who control access to 
tobacco products, the teachers, the coaching, the advertising 
executives. I thank the health care professionals and the volunteers.
    Because of this great sea of people in America, what was once the 
work of a few lonely activists has grown into a national movement to 
protect the health and the future of our children. Three thousand young 
people start to smoke every day and a thousand of them will have their 
lives shortened as a result. It seems to me that as President, if I say 
that what I really want is for every American child who is willing to 
work for it to have his or her shot at the American dream, that cannot 
be done unless we first of all try to guarantee them the existence and 
the health necessary to pursue their dreams. And that is also what the 
rest of us must do.
    We have, as all of you know, proposed ways to crack down on 
advertising that tells young people smoking is cool. We've proposed ways 
to make it harder for children and teenagers to buy cigarettes by 
reducing their access to vending machines and free samples. We issued 
the Synar regulation in January to demand that States in return for the 
Federal money they received do more to enforce their own laws against 
the sale of tobacco to minors. It's worth noting here that it is illegal 
in every single State of the Union to sell any form of tobacco to 
minors.
    We're working closely with State governments to ensure that the 
Synar regulations are implemented quickly and decisively. And I have to 
say that so far the results on that front have been quite encouraging to 
me.

[[Page 533]]

    All of you I want to thank for supporting these efforts. All of you 
who have been fighting for a long time are now working to bring your 
experience in new ways to bear on this effort through the National 
Center for Tobacco-Free Kids. And I want to welcome especially some of 
the people in this room who are new to the struggle in this effort, but 
who can make all the difference.
    First, let me say I am very glad to announce that two groups of 
America's athletes, heroes to so many young people, have come forward to 
help. Young women in particular are bombarded with billboards which 
suggest that smoking is cool and glamorous and a good way to stay thin. 
The women of the U.S. National Soccer Team know better. This spring and 
this summer, they are going to make America proud when they complete in 
the Olympics. And just when thousands of young girls around the country 
are looking up to them, they are going to make it clear that smoking is 
not cool.
    Working with the Federal Government, they have launched a major 
promotional advertisement effort called ``Smoke-Free Kids and Soccer.'' 
The effort, including television advertising, will be centered around 
the team's matches all across our country leading up to the Olympics in 
Atlanta this summer. It will make a real difference in people's lives, 
and two members of that team are here today. I would like for them to 
stand and be recognized. Thank you very much. [Applause]
    Former major league baseball players Joe Garagiola and Bill Tuttle, 
along with Mrs. Tuttle, have stepped up to the plate to help get spit 
tobacco out of baseball. As leaders of the National Spit Tobacco 
Education Campaign, they are working to educate players about the 
dangers and to help protect the health of young fans who look up to 
them. In fact, they've just come back from a trip down to spring 
training in Florida where they met with team owners and the players' 
union, and they are making some very impressive progress as well. I want 
to ask Joe and Bill and Mrs. Tuttle to stand and I want to thank them. 
Thank you so much, and God bless you. [Applause]
    I also want to thank some businesses who are doing their part. 
Businesses, of course, have a right to sell cigarettes to adults, but 
they also have a responsibility, a legal one and a moral one, to prevent 
cigarette sales to minors. I'm very proud and happy to announce that 
major United States supermarket chains are taking decisive steps to 
curtail the sale of cigarettes and tobacco to young people. A&P company, 
Giant Food, and Pratts supermarkets are instituting mandatory training 
of all their cashiers to ensure that they know the law and understand 
their obligations to enforce it. That means requiring identification 
from all young people who seek to buy cigarettes.
    In July, A&P Chairman James Wood will recommend to the board of 
directors that A&P discontinue the use of all vending machines by the 
end of the year. Giant is going to eliminate vending machines in all 
stores except for their 24-hour stores. Pratts doesn't allow any 
cigarette vending machines at all. And in the meantime, A&P and Giant 
are converting their vending machines so they only operate with tokens 
that must be purchased from a cashier.
    I urge every supermarket chain and every individual grocery store in 
America to follow the lead of these three companies and shut down 
tobacco sales to minors. I'd like to ask the people here from those 
companies to stand to be recognized today. Thank you very much. 
[Applause]
    Let me just say one other thing about them. You know, I spend a 
great deal of my time as your President trying to find ways to both 
generate more jobs for America and to help American businesses make more 
money, because both those things are very good for our country. And I'm 
proud of the fact that our country has produced in the last 3 years 8.4 
million new jobs. And unlike the past 15 years, almost all of these jobs 
have been created in the private sector as we have downsized the 
Government.
    Therefore, any President and any citizen must think seriously before 
we ask a business to do something that will cost it money. This decision 
costs these people money. And they did it because it was the right thing 
to do for America. And I thank you for that very much.
    I want to thank all the activists who are here in the room who have 
been recognized

[[Page 534]]

and those of you who have not. And especially I'd like to say a word of 
thanks to the former employees of tobacco companies who have stood up to 
tell the world the truth. And I want to recognize one in particular, the 
late Victor Crawford, whose wife, Linda, is here today. He was a great 
champion for our children. We miss him today. We wish he were here, and 
we know he's smiling down on us. Thank you, Linda, for being here, and 
God bless you.
    My friends, we have come a long way in this endeavor, indeed, a long 
way since our administration made the first announcement about our 
efforts to reduce tobacco advertising and tobacco sales to young people. 
Now we have supermarket chains, athletes, workers, private citizens who 
have recognized the threat tobacco poses. And this movement is producing 
results. Just last week there was a major breakthrough when Liggett 
agreed to settle its lawsuits. It became the very first tobacco company 
to acknowledge that tobacco can be deadly. This is the first crack in 
the stone wall of denial. My message to other tobacco companies is, 
therefore, simple and direct: Take responsibility. Sell to adults, but 
draw the line on children.
    I'm happy that Liggett has also agreed to begin changing their own 
advertising practices so that they have less influence over young 
people. That's a good start. And now I want them and the other tobacco 
companies to go the distance. If selling cigarettes to minors is 
illegal, no good corporate citizen should be aiming advertising at those 
minors.
    My fellow Americans, we can win this fight. We can save countless 
lives of our young people. We can give them the future that we imagine 
when we look into the bright faces of these children who are here. But 
we have to do it together. It is folly to pretend that any one of us, 
including the President, can do it alone.
    When he graduated from high school in 1968, Mike Synar called on his 
classmates to, quote, ``Stand and be counted when the occasion arises.'' 
Well, he always did. This occasion requires us to do it for him, and I 
am honored that we can do it in his name.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 3:50 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House upon receiving the Mike Synar National Public Service Award from 
the Coalition on Smoking OR Health. In his remarks, he referred to Alan 
Synar, brother of the late Representative Mike Synar, and Lonnie 
Bristow, president, American Medical Association.