Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the National Labor Relations Board -- Veto

Floor Speech

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, a number of my colleagues came to
the floor yesterday to speak about the FDA's failure to release the
tobacco deeming rule and the delays that have occurred with respect to
that rule.

As difficult as the American people may find it to understand why
there are these delays in issuing a rule that protects our citizens
against tobacco use--most particularly our children--we should all
understand that these rules have real-life consequences.

Tobacco, in fact, is the leading cause of preventable death. In this
Nation, tobacco use kills more than half a million people every year.
Most smokers and tobacco users begin as children, many under the age of
10. Each day, more than 3,200 people younger than 18 years old smoke
their first cigarette, and the consequences are inevitable. Thousands
of them will die early in life.

Cigarettes are the only product in the world that, when used as the
manufacturer intends it, kills the customer. If smoking continues at
the current rate among U.S. youth, 5.6 million of them are expected to
die prematurely from smoking-related illness.

Tobacco use is a path to addiction and disease, and it is a public
health epidemic. Yet laws that protect the public, laws that forbid
marketing to children, laws that are designed to uphold the public
trust have been unimplemented.

My fight against Big Tobacco began in the 1990s, when I was attorney
general of the State of Connecticut. I helped to lead a lawsuit against
tobacco companies for marketing to children. We succeeded in
restricting tobacco companies from selling to and targeting children in
their ads through sporting events, magazines, and point of sale
methods. We helped reimburse the States for the enormous amount of
taxpayer dollars spent on tobacco-related diseases, and those payments
continue today. They are supposed to be used for prevention and
cessation activities, but unfortunately and tragically, much of that
money is now used to fill gaps in State budgets.

I have continued my fight against the tobacco companies in the
Senate, alongside dedicated colleagues such as Senator Merkley and
Senator Durbin, who spoke yesterday, in urging the FDA to seek relief,
to strive to do its job with the tobacco deeming rule in order to
protect children and families from tobacco.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 gave
the FDA significant power and responsibility to achieve this goal. Now
it is the FDA's responsibility to implement that law to prevent young
people from becoming nicotine addicts, damaging their health, risking
their lives, and costing the taxpayers hundreds of millions--in fact,
billions--of dollars.

Six years have passed since that law was passed. The FDA has yet to
implement it, and the reason is that it has yet to issue those
regulations. It wasn't until last year, April 2014--5 years after the
measure passed--that the FDA took the first step, issuing draft
regulations known as the deeming rule that would formalize this
authority. The rule would allow the FDA to control the regulation and
sale--in particular, the sale to minors--of e-cigarettes, as well as
dangerous combustible products, such as hookah, pipe tobacco, and
cigars.

This past Saturday, April 25, was the 1-year anniversary of the
release of the proposed rule. Over the past year, youth use of
unregulated tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes and the hookah, has
skyrocketed. E-cigarette use has tripled among 11- to 18-year-olds,
while hookah use has almost doubled.

There is clear data, absolutely irrefutable evidence that the rate of
use of these products has increased even as some of the use of tobacco
products has diminished, and this chart illustrates that evidence. It
indicates that use of the regulated products has diminished, while use
of unregulated products has increased. So laws work. Rules have an
effect. People can be saved from addiction and disease. And these
products--cigars, pipes, hookahs, e-cigarettes--lead to tobacco use in
cigarettes and addiction to nicotine. They create the same kind of
public health menace that tobacco products do.

We know that nicotine addiction is surging through e-cigarette use,
which is a disastrous tribute to the ingenuity of Big Tobacco. In fact,
many of the big tobacco companies have bought the e-cigarette companies
because they know they can use the e-cigarettes as a gateway nicotine-
delivery device, addicting children so that they will then shift to
cigarette tobacco.

I am joining my colleagues in urging that the FDA act as quickly as
possible to implement these rules, to finalize the regulations, to get
them out of the regulatory apparatus, the morass in which they are now
trapped, and make sure that our children and our citizens are protected
against the marketing and other abuses that are involved in the current
sale of these nicotine-delivery devices marketed to children.

I am also proud to be introducing today a new measure, the Tobacco
Tax and Enforcement Reform Act, which is supported by Senators Durbin,
Reed, and Boxer. I am very grateful to them for their leadership not
only on this measure but over many years in fighting this battle
against nicotine addiction and tobacco use.

Congress has a continuing responsibility to combat cigarette smoking
directly. Right now, there are a number of areas where loopholes and
gaps exist in the enforcement structure. We need to do more to fight
illegal tobacco trafficking. We need to eliminate the tax disparities
between different tobacco products. These gaps in our laws and
law enforcement failures create opportunities and incentives for
violations of those laws, at great cost to the State with regard to
illegal trafficking.

Similar to the changes outlined in the President's budget proposal,
this bill would also increase the Federal tax rate on tobacco products.
In fact, these reforms would help the Federal Government and States
collect nearly $100 billion at a time when our States are strapped
fiscally and our Federal Government needs that revenue as well. These
revenues would not only reduce tobacco consumption, they would also aid
the fiscal well-being of our State and local governments.

Most importantly from the standpoint of law enforcement, it would
force criminals who engage in illegal trafficking to comply with the
law. It would combat those criminals who profit from the illegal sale
of these products and trafficking across State lines, who are selling
illicitly and gaining huge numbers of dollars from that legal
noncompliance.

Economic research confirms that raising the price of tobacco reduces
use among young people, who are particularly sensitive to pricing. They
are sensitive to price increases because they have less disposable
income and know they have fewer dollars to spend. They are more price-
sensitive. In fact, every 10 percent increase in the real price of
cigarettes will reduce the prevalence of adult smoking by 5 percent and
youth smoking by 7 percent. Adults are price-sensitive, too. Increasing
the cost of cigarettes makes people more likely to want to quit and to
pursue tobacco cessation, to break the nicotine habit and seek help
through quit lines, the nicotine patch, and other pharmaceutical
measures.

The current tobacco tax code has many loopholes that enable even the
least creative manufacturers to exploit them and incentivizes many
manufacturers to manipulate products so they can be classified in a
lower tax category. These tax incentives and loopholes not only sharply
reduce Federal revenues, but they increase the overall use of tobacco
and tobacco-related harms. Eliminating these tax disparities, along
with the price, is one of the goals of the measure I am introducing
today. By taxing all products at the same level as cigarettes, we can
make progress against nicotine addiction and the illnesses and diseases
associated with tobacco use.

The increase in tax rate on cigarettes by 94 percent per pack and
setting the rates for other tobacco products to an equivalent amount
would help people who are now addicted and would also help America
because at the end of the day the real cost of cigarettes is not only
to people who are addicted and who endure the suffering and the pain of
cancer, lung disease, and heart problems, it is to their families and
to all taxpayers. All of us--literally, all of us--pay for the diseases
that result from tobacco use through our insurance policies and through
Medicare and Medicaid. We are the ones who bear the financial burden.

Due to these current tax inequities, the GAO has projected $615
million to $1.1 billion in losses to Federal tax revenue right now, and
tobacco-related health problems cost the country almost $170 billion a
year in direct medical costs. We can save money and save lives through
this measure. I hope my colleagues will support it.

Every day that goes by without FDA regulation harms children. It
hurts people who become addicted. It hurts all of America. Every day
that tax disparities exist, every day that illegal trafficking
continues is a day when America pays in the casualties, human
suffering, loss of productivity, and loss of revenue.

I hope my colleagues will support these efforts.

Thank you, Madam President.

I yield the floor.

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