Tobacco-Free Youth Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, earlier this week, Senator Kaine and I introduced new legislation to raise the national minimum age for purchasing tobacco products to 21. Now, it has generated some attention that Senators from Kentucky and Virginia--States with some connection to tobacco farming and production--are sponsoring this legislation, but, as I said Monday, Kentucky farmers don't want their children forming nicotine addictions in middle school or high school any more than anyone else.

Well, it turns out a lot of people across the country feel the same way we do. We have already seen more than a dozen experts, advocates, and public health groups come to rally around our legislation. One such organization said that the proposal would ``support smoking prevention among a population that is particularly susceptible to addiction, whose brains are still developing, and among whom nicotine use can have long- term developmental harms.''

When you consider the design of our approach, it is hardly surprising that leading voices in this area are lining up with enthusiasm. It is practical, it is within our reach, and it can become law. Our legislation simply works from the foundation of existing law. We take the existing mechanisms that are in Federal statute today to enforce the 18-year minimum standard and replace ``18'' with ``21.'' It is simple, it is straightforward, and it builds on what we know works.

Not only does this approach streamline implementation for addressing a widely acknowledged public health crisis, but it also preserves the freedom of individual States to go even further in their efforts to protect vulnerable youth. Yet it ensures States cannot enact anything less protective than the Federal T21 standard.

As I said earlier in the week, all youth below the age of 21 deserve the same protections from the public health crisis of nicotine addiction. Anyone who actually reads our bill will see that our intentions are clear and above reproach. Partisan griping will not save lives, nor will it prevent even more middle schoolers from yielding to potentially deadly addiction. As one advocate put it, ``Every extra day it takes to put this important legislation into effect is an opportunity for thousands more kids to access a tobacco product that can damage their developing brains.''

Now is the time for us to join together in a bipartisan manner and actually get a result that our Nation's youth so obviously need. In just 3 days since introduction, I have been encouraged by the support the Tobacco-Free Youth Act has received. I look forward to working with each of our colleagues to make it a reality and fight back against the scourge of addiction among America's young people.

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