Regulating Tobacco

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues for their very powerful comments, and I have a poster as well. In the spirit of Halloween, mine uses candy. I doubt that children this Halloween are going to receive some of these products--I hope not--when they go door-to-door, but people looking at this poster could easily mistake the candy for the candy-flavored cigarillos or the candy that looks like cigarettes, appears to be tobacco products, or the spit tobacco that is flavored with candy look-alikes.

Today the temptation is to have some fun, use some puns, but I come here in sadness and frankly in anger--sadness that every day thousands of people will become addicted to nicotine and suffer from diseases that tobacco causes, whether it is cancer or smoking-related lung problems, and also tobacco-related problems that can increase the cost as well as the suffering in our Nation.

We are dealing here with indefensible delays in issuing a rule that is necessary to enforce the law. Let me be clear about what is happening. The Tobacco Control Act was passed 6 years ago. All of us thought the provisions of that Federal law would go into effect to protect Americans against the nicotine addiction that is peddled relentlessly and tirelessly by the tobacco industry. We are 6 years later in an administration that is probably the most pro-public health and anti-tobacco abuse of any in our history, and still, 6 years later that law is unenforced, and the reason is there are no regulations.

We are 18 months after the FDA released the rule called the deeming rule necessary to enforce that law. Eighteen months have passed since the FDA acted, 6 years since the law was passed in this body, and still there is no protection for Americans.

This fight goes back years and years, and I was involved as attorney general for the State of Connecticut in helping bring a landmark lawsuit. I helped to lead that lawsuit as one of the States that sued the tobacco companies for marketing to children.

Back then this poster might have been used in court, and I appeared in court to say that the tobacco companies, despite their denials, were marketing and pitching to children by using Joe Camel. Today the playbook is exactly the same. The tactics have changed, but the strategy is the same: using pitches, wrappings, and flavors to target children--not teenagers or college kids--but younger children who are persuaded by the model of their older siblings and friends to begin a lifetime of addiction and disease.

They may be fooled by the candy flavors and the wrappings and the pitches that are used, but we should not be, the FDA should not be, and the Office of Management and Budget should not be fooled. They should not be waiting to issue this rule. It should be issued now.

We have written to them, asking that the rule be issued. A number of us wrote a letter to Shaun Donovan. I very simply asked the President of the United States for no more delays. Do the rule now. There is no excuse for delay and, by the way, time is not on our side. During every year of delay, thousands more children become addicted, and the President of the United States knows about that addiction because he is a former smoker--hopefully it is former, not present--and he knows the power of nicotine because he has worked hard to overcome it.

Let's prevent young people from becoming addicted in the first place. Let's save money and save lives. Please, Mr. President of the United States, issue this rule.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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