Family Smoking Prevention And Tobacco Control Act - Motion To Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I am very pleased that we are finally taking up this very important legislation. Regulating tobacco through the FDA is an essential part of addressing public health issues related to tobacco use, and I fully support this long overdue legislation. The cost of smoking is estimated at $96 billion a year in health care costs. The human toll is even more appalling: 440,000 smoking-related deaths per year. Tobacco is responsible for one-third of all cancer deaths in the United States each year, and tobacco use is the most preventable cause of death in the country.

There are many important provisions in this bill, but this issue is primarily about our children. It is appalling that in Vermont, one in every six high school students smokes cigarettes, and nationally 20 percent--one in every five high school students--smoke. Every day, about 3,600 children between 12 and 17 years of age smoke their first cigarette; 1,100 of them will become regular smokers, and 300 of those will ultimately die from this habit. That is condemning over 100,000 kids every year to a certain early death caused by tobacco. No wonder that 70 percent of voters strongly support FDA having the authority to regulate tobacco.

Make no mistake, tobacco marketing and marketing to kids is big business. The tobacco industry spends about $36 million every day marketing and advertising its addictive products in the United States. That is over $13 billion a year. The multinational corporations that market tobacco are not spending that kind of money if they don't expect a big return. Some of these ads are not just trying to get older addicted smokers to switch brands, they are marketing to girls and young women to get them to start smoking and they are marketing to teenage boys to get them to start smoking. They are adding candy flavors to get young people to start smoking.

That our Nation's most vulnerable are subjected to these kinds of marketing campaigns of multimillion-dollar profit companies is a disgrace and an outrage. Can one imagine a company trying to addict our young people to a habit which will prematurely kill them? I am not quite sure what kind of morality exists on the part of people who do this. We are talking about an industry where the largest company, Philip Morris, brought in $18.5 billion in revenue in 2007 from their U.S. business alone and over $64 billion in total revenues internationally. The tobacco industry spent nearly $28 million lobbying Congress in 2008, and from 1998 to 2006, they spent over $248 million to prevent Congress from acting to protect the children and the citizens of our country from this addictive practice. Given these figures and the fact that profit margins are estimated at 46 cents per pack for Philip Morris, I cannot understand any argument against legislation to regulate the marketing, advertising, and product standards of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Tobacco has been considered more addictive than heroin. Let me repeat: Tobacco has been considered more addictive than heroin. In fact, there are a number of anecdotal stories of former heroin addicts who were able to kick their heroin habit but not their tobacco habit. It was just too hard to quit tobacco compared to heroin. Imagine that.

Tobacco companies are adding nicotine and other chemicals to their products to make these products even more addictive. And they are not regulated. Nobody regulates them. They can add whatever they want whenever they want. So we have multinational corporate executives in three-piece suits making huge amounts in compensation packages based on selling a killing and addictive product to the American people and to our children. We should be very clear when we take a look at these CEOs and understand that they are nothing more than high-priced and high-paid drug pushers. This Congress has spoken out repeatedly against those horrendous people, the lowest of the low, who are trying to get our kids into heroin and other drugs. We should look at these CEOs in the same way and say to them: How dare you try to sell addictive products to our kids, get them hooked into smoking cigarettes, and force them to end their lives prematurely and, in many cases, very painfully.

While one major part of this issue is stopping tobacco use before it starts, Congress will also need to take up the issue of cessation. About 70 percent of all smokers say they want to quit smoking, but tobacco is so addictive that even the most motivated may try to quit eight or nine times before they are able to do so. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to address what I see as an addiction that leaves hard-working people struggling to make ends meet with limited choices in terms of cessation programs. What we have to do as a nation--and I know it is outside the scope of this particular bill--is to make it as easy as possible for anyone in America who wants help in order to stop smoking and kicking the habit to be able to do so.

We are not there right now. Sometimes it is complicated. Sometimes it is expensive. Sometimes people do not know how to access cessation programs. But I think that is a goal we must strive for.

Studies have shown smoking has become even more concentrated among populations with lower incomes and with less education. Why do low-income people smoke? Medical research shows that being poor is, needless to say, extremely stressful. And as anyone who has ever been addicted to tobacco knows, being anxious, being stressful makes you reach for a cigarette.

We have a lot of work in front of us. I think this bill is a very good step forward. The bottom line is, this Congress has to, through the FDA, regulate tobacco. Our goal has to be for these companies to stop pushing their dangerous and addictive product onto our people, especially our kids. Our goal has to be to come up with programs to make it as easy as possible for people to get off their addiction.

So we have a lot of work in front of us. I think this bill is a very good step forward.

Having said that, Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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