[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 4 (Monday, January 26, 1998)]
[Pages 91-92]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's Radio Address

January 17, 1998

    Good morning. Today I want to talk about the steps we must take to 
protect our children and the public health from one of the greatest 
threats they face--tobacco. For years, tobacco companies have sworn they 
do not market their deadly products to children, but this week 
disturbing documents came to light that confirm our worst suspicions.
    For years one of our Nation's biggest tobacco companies appears to 
have singled out our children, carefully studying their habits and 
pursuing a marketing strategy designed to prey on their insecurities in 
order to get them to smoke.
    Let me read you two of the most startling lines from an internal 
tobacco company presentation proposing a marketing campaign targeted at 
children as young as 14. Quote, ``Our strategy becomes clear: direct 
advertising appeal to younger smokers.'' Younger smokers, this document 
says also, and I quote, ``represent tomorrow's cigarette business.'' The 
message of these documents is all too clear: Marketing to children 
sells 
cigarettes.

[[Page 92]]

    Today I want to send a very different message to those who would 
endanger our children: Young people are not the future of the tobacco 
industry; they are the future of America. And we must take immediate, 
decisive action to protect them.
    We know that every day 3,000 young people will start smoking and 
1,000 of them will die prematurely due to tobacco-related disease. We 
know that 90 percent of adults who smoke--90 percent--began using 
tobacco before the age of 18. That is why, starting in 1995, we launched 
a historic nationwide effort with the FDA to stop our children from 
smoking before they start, reducing their access to tobacco products and 
severely restricting tobacco companies from advertising to young people. 
The balanced budget agreement I signed into law last summer includes a 
$24 billion children's health initiative, providing health coverage to 
up to 5 million uninsured children, paid for by tobacco taxes.
    But even these efforts are not enough to fully protect our children 
from the dangers of smoking. To do that we need comprehensive, 
bipartisan legislation. Last September I proposed five key elements that 
must be at the heart of that legislation. First, and most important, it 
must mandate the development of a comprehensive plan to reduce teen 
smoking with tough penalties for companies that don't comply. Second, it 
must affirm the FDA's full authority to regulate tobacco products. 
Third, it must include measures to hold the tobacco industry 
accountable, especially for marketing tobacco to children. Fourth, it 
must include concrete measures to improve the public health, from 
reducing secondhand smoke to expanding smoking cessation programs to 
funding medical research on the effects of tobacco. And finally, it must 
protect tobacco farmers and their communities from the loss of income 
caused by our efforts to reduce smoking by young people.
    If Congress sends me a bill that mandates those steps, I will sign 
it. My administration will do all it can to ensure that Congress passes 
this legislation. In September I asked the Vice President to build 
bipartisan support for the legislation, and he has held forums all 
across our country to focus public attention on the issue.
    In a few weeks, my balanced budget proposal will make specific 
recommendations on how much the tobacco industry should pay and how we 
can best use those funds to protect the public health and our children. 
Today I want to let Members of Congress know that our administration 
will sit down with them anytime, anywhere to work out bipartisan 
legislation.
    Reducing teen smoking has always been American's bottom line and 
always our administration's bottom line. But to make it the tobacco 
industry's bottom line, we have to have legislation. This is not about 
politics. This is not about money. It is about our children.
    The 1998 Congress should be remembered as the Congress that passed 
comprehensive tobacco legislation, not the Congress that passed up this 
historic opportunity to protect our children and our future.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 10:50 a.m. on January 16 in the Oval 
Office at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on January 17.