Family Smoking Prevention And Tobacco Control Act - Motion To Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, pending before the Senate now is consideration of a bill that would dramatically change the way we regulate tobacco and tobacco products in America. This is an issue which has meant a lot to me during the course of my time in the House and in the Senate.

Many years ago--over 20 years ago--I offered an amendment which was the first successful attempt to regulate tobacco. I should say, earlier efforts at warning labels go back many years. But this was the first successful attempt to regulate the use of tobacco product.

What we did 20 years ago was suggest that the old days and the old ways of allowing people to smoke on airplanes had to change. Some of us are old enough to remember those days when you would make a reservation to fly on an airplane and you would tell them whether you wanted to sit in the smoking on nonsmoking section--as if there was any difference. For the most part, if you happen to be seated, at least, in the last seat of the nonsmoking section, you might as well be smack dab in the middle of the smoking section.

So we decided to eliminate smoking on airplanes. That was an amendment I offered in the House of Representatives over 20 years ago. It had the opposition of the tobacco lobby and the opposition of all the political leadership in the House of Representatives--Democrats and Republicans. They all opposed it for a variety of different reasons. But we called it anyway, and the amendment was successful. What it taught me was that Members of Congress are members of the largest frequent flyer club in America. We spend more time on airplanes than most. If there is something we want to change, it affects us personally. And this did.

So Democrats and Republicans came forward, and we started a trend which I think has been very beneficial for this country because once I passed that amendment, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey took it up here in the Senate. He successfully passed it. We worked together to eventually eliminate smoking on airplanes, and the American people noticed. They liked it. They reached an obvious and rational conclusion: If secondhand smoke is dangerous in an airplane, then it is also dangerous in a train, in a bus, in an office, in a school, in a hospital, in a restaurant. Of course, the dominoes just kept falling. As they fell, there were more and more restrictions on smoking in public-type places.

So there were many things still to be done, and we started thinking about the obvious need for change. We knew we were up against one of the most powerful lobbies on Capitol Hill with the tobacco lobby. Not only were they very wealthy, with a lot of revenue from the sale of their product, but they also had ingratiated themselves to many Members of Congress of both parties. They did it in obvious ways: in contributing to campaigns. They were a major factor in some districts where they either manufactured their product or tobacco was grown. But they also befriended many Members of Congress, providing charitable contributions to hometown charities for Members of the House and Senate. It went a long way to build up good will and to convince Members of Congress to oppose any other changes when it came to tobacco regulation.

Well, there were things we knew needed to be done. You see, each day in America, 3,000 to 4,000 children start smoking for the first time--3,000 to 4,000 a day. During the course of that decisionmaking, about a third or a fourth of them will decide to stick with it. They will stick with it long enough that the nicotine chemical in the cigarette creates a craving and satisfies an addiction which is tough to break.

Oh, I have seen people walk away from a lifetime of smoking in a few days. But I have also seen people struggling for their entire lives trying to break that smoking habit--patches notwithstanding and hypnosis and all those things. For a lot of people, it is a very hard thing to do.

The tobacco companies know if they are going to have 400,000 of their customers die each year, they have to replace them with children.

If people wait until they are 18 years old or 21 years old, they are likely to be smart enough not to start smoking, but if you are 12 or 13, it is an adventure. It is something that is forbidden, and it shows that you are just like a grownup, and kids try it.

The tobacco companies know that. Although they deny it, they market to kids. They sell their products in a way that appeals to children, hoping that teenagers and even younger will start taking up this tobacco habit because it is not only cool, it tastes good. The advertising is appealing. Tobacco companies spend over $13 billion a year promoting their products and many of those marketing efforts are directed right at our kids.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, would the assistant majority leader yield for a moment?

Mr. DURBIN. I would be happy to.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I wanted to reemphasize the words of the assistant majority leader for a moment because I was walking through and heard his comments about tobacco companies' efforts to get children addicted.

As the assistant majority leader said, more than 1,000 Americans a day--400,000 a year--die from tobacco-related illnesses. I remember 15 years ago sitting in the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee listening to tobacco executives talk to us about a whole host of things that they weren't exactly truthful about. But from the point Senator Durbin makes that 400,000 Americans die a year from tobacco-related illnesses, it is clear that what the tobacco companies know they have to do is they have to replenish their customers. They have to find more than 1,000 new customers a day. They don't go to our age group. They do not go to 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds or 40-year-olds or even 30-year-olds; they go to the people the age of the pages sitting in front of us. They go to teenagers. Those are the people whom they know they must addict to replenish their customer base, if you will. That is why this legislation is so important and why the efforts of the assistant majority leader over the last 20 years, as a Member of the House and Senate, are so important, the victories he has had such as stopping smoking on airplanes and all of those other places. This legislation is extraordinarily important.

I yield back to the assistant majority leader.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio for joining in. He certainly recalls those infamous hearings in the House of Representatives when the tobacco company executives stood up and ceremoniously testified under oath that nicotine was not addictive. That, I think, was the beginning of the end of the tobacco lobby in Washington, DC. Everyone knew that they were, at best, misleading and, at worst, just plain lying to the American people. When it came to their advertising, they denied for years that kids were their targets. They said it hadn't been the case.

Then one can take a look at some of the tobacco companies' internal documents that came out during the course of lawsuits, and let me tell my colleagues some of the things they found.

The Lorillard Tobacco Company was quoted as saying: ``The base of our business is the high school student.''

Philip Morris, in their internal documents, said: ``Today's teenager is tomorrow's potential regular customer.''

U.S. Tobacco: ``Cherry Skoal is for somebody who likes the taste of candy, if you know what I'm saying.'' I think I know what they are saying.

R.J. Reynolds, in an internal document, said:

Many manufacturers have ``studied'' the 14-20 market in hopes of uncovering the ``secret'' of the instant popularity some brands enjoy to the almost exclusion of Ðothers. ..... creating a ``fad'' in this market can be a great bonanza.

So make no mistake about it. We know. We all know. Tobacco companies have directed their ad campaigns and their recruitment at our children. I have said it before; it bears repeating. I have never met a parent who has said to me, I got the greatest news last night. My daughter came home and announced she had started smoking.

I have never heard that. I don't think I ever will. Most parents know that is a bad decision and one that can be fatal.

Cigarette companies claim they have finally stopped intentionally marketing to kids and targeting youth in their research and in their promotions, but they continue to advertise cigarettes in ways that reach these populations. They continue to make products that appeal to kids.

For example, take a look at this one on this chart. This is a product called Liquid Zoo. The packaging is powerful, and the cigarettes come in fun flavors: Coconut cigarettes. How about that one? Vanilla cigarettes. Strawberry cigarettes. Liquid Zoo offers these. It is almost as if you are going into an ice cream store, which most kids like to do, because you are offering the flavors they will find in the ice cream.

Look at the Sweet Dreams and Chocolate Dreams cigarettes over here; again, a variety of kid-friendly flavors. This time, the cigarettes themselves, if you will notice down here, are pastel colors to make them even more appealing to children. Not only are these cigarettes designed to appeal to kids, but the tobacco companies buy the ads in magazines that teenagers read and try to draw them to their brands through advertising.

Here is a familiar one: Camel. Look at this ad for Camel cigarettes that ran in Rolling Stone Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue in 2004 and 2005. You can see from this ad it is appealing. These packages are designed in ways to appeal to young people, and the advertising as well. It took 39 State attorneys general to get on the tobacco companies' case before they finally agreed to stop marketing these cigarettes.

So what is next? Well, until we pass this legislation, it is inevitable that these tobacco companies will dream up another way to market their product to the kids.

This bill before us will make a difference. For the first time we are going to get serious about this. Tobacco products are one of the few, and maybe the only, products in America that go unregulated. You can't sell food or medicine in America without the Food and Drug Administration, or even the U.S. Department of Agriculture, taking a look at it. I will concede they don't inspect every package of food you will find in the store, but they have an overall responsibility to make sure that that product is safe for Americans to consume. But tobacco is an exception. Tobacco is not regulated. Tobacco is not inspected. They somehow manage to wiggle their way somewhere between food and drugs, saying, Oh, we are not a food product, and we are definitely not a drug product you would find in a pharmacy. But we know better. Even though it is an odd way to deliver a chemical--a drug--tobacco delivers nicotine and a lot of other chemicals as well. So even though they were successful in Congress for decades exempting themselves from coverage and inspection by the Food and Drug Administration, this bill is going to change that.

Senator Ted Kennedy is recovering from cancer, a brain tumor he has been fighting for many months now, and we all wish him the very best. He was the one who pushed this bill. He is the one who believed that the Food and Drug Administration should regulate tobacco products. I am sorry he can't be on the floor, because I would like to give him a big shout-out for the years he put into this effort. But we are here, and we have a chance to pass this legislation.

Here is what the bill does. It prohibits the colorful and alluring images in advertising that these tobacco companies shamelessly use to appeal to
children. This bill also limits ads to only black-and-white text in newspapers and magazines with significant young readership, and in stores that are accessible to children. It makes it harder for them to reach out to these kids and to dazzle them with their artwork and all of their images. It bans outdoor advertising near schools and playgrounds so kids won't be standing, waiting to go into school, looking up at a billboard suggesting that after school, you better get a pack of cigarettes. It ends incentives to buy cigarettes by prohibiting free giveaways with the purchase of tobacco products, and it finally puts a stop to tobacco sponsorship of sports and entertainment events.

I wish to tell my colleagues that most of us know the warnings that have been on cigarette packages for more than 40 years have outlived their usefulness. Does anybody notice them anymore? They put them on the sides of packages. They are really routine. Folks don't pay attention.

Well, we are going to change that. We are going to have much more effective warning labels on these products. This bill requires large, clearly visible warning labels at least covering half of the front and half of the back of the package of cigarettes. These labels will have large text and graphics displaying the dangers of smoking. Some people say, Why waste your time warning people? They know it already. Maybe they do. Maybe they need to be reminded. But we have an obligation as a government, as a people, to do everything we can to discourage this deadly addiction.

We are also going to require much larger warning labels in print ads for products. Some of these pictures I have shown my colleagues, you almost need a magnifying glass to find the Surgeon General's warning, which sadly has gone ignored too often. We are going to improve that by requiring that warning messages take up at least 20 percent of any advertisement they have in a magazine or on a billboard.

Study after study shows that advertising can influence young buyers. We certainly want to influence them to make a healthy decision when it comes to tobacco. This bill makes critical changes to limit kids' exposure to tobacco ads, and we know that is going to prevent kids from trying cigarettes and getting addicted.

One of the things we do in this bill as well is finally tell those who buy tobacco products what they are buying. If you believe a cigarette is just tobacco leaves ground up and put into a paper cylinder, you have missed the point. Those cigarettes are loaded with chemicals, not just the obvious naturally occurring nicotine but added nicotine to increase the addiction of smokers, as well as other chemicals which they think will make the taste of tobacco more appealing and will in some ways help the new smoker get through that first two or three cigarettes where they might be coughing. They are trying to make it a smooth transition from ordinary breathing to breathing with tobacco smoke, so they load up the cigarettes with these chemicals.

If you go in and buy a box of macaroni at the store and take a look at the side of the package, you will see the contents. What is that macaroni made of? It will have 6 or 8 or 10 different things and a nutrition labeling box. If you pick up one of these packs of cigarettes and look for the ingredients, what is included in that cigarette, you won't find it. Why the exception? Because the tobacco lobby made sure there was an exception. They don't want you to know what is in that little paper cylinder of tobacco. Now that is going to change. This bill before us is going to give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to require disclosure of ingredients so that consumers know what they are getting into, and, of course, in the process, give us information we need to find out what kind of dangerous, toxic chemicals are being added to cigarettes. Those listening may say, Well, this Senator is getting carried away calling them toxic chemicals. In fact, they are. They are toxic, and they are carcinogenic, they are dangerous, and they make that smoking experience even more hazardous for the people who are involved in it. Don't we owe that warning to consumers across America? Don't we owe it to our kids? Shouldn't we try to protect the American people from the dangers that are associated with the No. 1 preventable cause of death in America today, tobacco-related illness?

This bill has been a long time coming. Some of us have been battling this tobacco industry for two decades, and more. Now we have a chance to do something. We had a press conference earlier with Senator CHRIS DODD of Connecticut, and he has kind of picked up this standard and is carrying it for Senator Kennedy, who is the inspiration for most of us when it comes to this issue. Senator Dodd just completed the Credit Card Reform Act a couple of weeks ago, a measure we have been trying to bring to the Senate floor for 25 years. He successfully guided it through. Here he is back 2 weeks later with an issue that has been waiting in the wings for at least 10 or 20 years. I salute Senator Dodd for his extraordinary leadership on these two historic issues.

Senator Lautenberg, my colleague when it came to banning smoking on airplanes, was at the press conference. Senator JACK REED of Rhode Island, who has always been stalwart when it comes to this issue, was there. I said at the press conference: I wonder if 20 years from now, a child or grandchild of one of these Senators will come up and say Granddad, explain to me. You mean you actually sold these cigarettes with warning labels people couldn't read and they didn't have to disclose their ingredients, and they could sell them to kids and they could advertise to kids? You mean that actually happened? Well, it is happening right now, and unless we pass this bill, it will continue to happen. Unless we pass this bill, 1,000 of our children today and every single day will start smoking and start an addiction which will lead to the deaths of at least one out of three. That is the reality. We can face our responsibility here, pass this bill on a bipartisan basis and say to America, it took a long time, but this Congress of the United States of America has finally put the public health of the people we represent ahead of the tobacco lobby.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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