Family Smoking Prevention And Tobacco Control Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1256, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. I do it with enormous gratitude to Chairman Waxman for working for years to get legislation of this sort that would improve public health by strengthening the regulation of tobacco products.

There are a lot of diseases that we don't have the cure for today. There are lots of resources put into medical research that hopefully will find a cure to cancer and to AIDS and other terrible diseases. But we do know how we can prevent over 435,000 tobacco-related deaths that occur each year, and that is by preventing smoking.

There are over 44 million smokers in the United States of America. In Illinois alone, 24.3 percent of adults and 29.2 percent of youth smoke tobacco. In Illinois, 16,000 people die from smoking-related illnesses and 29,000 adults and children die of secondhand smoke in Illinois. In addition, $3.2 billion is spent in direct medical expenditures related to smoking in Illinois. And every day 4,000 kids try their cigarette, and about half of them become addicted.

Finally, we have legislation giving the FDA the power and resources to regulate the tobacco industry and safeguard the public health and our children. It would lessen the cost of smoking-related medical illnesses and prevent adolescents and teens from smoking at a young age.

In Illinois, I want to congratulate Alexandra Slane, an elementary school student from Peoria, Illinois, who won the Tar Wars anti-smoking annual poster contest with her drawing of a light bulb shaped as a human head. She wrote the caption in the human-shaped light bulb warning America, ``Be Bright, Don't Light.''

Let's start by passing H.R. 1256.

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