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Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate the words of Senator Hagan, who has been a leader in the Senate on issues for our veterans, for their health care and Camp Lejeune and so many other ways, looking out for pensions and health care for those who have earned it and sacrificed for us. She, as do I, believes it is an honor to honor those who have sacrificed for us.
CVS TOBACCO SALES
Today I was at a CVS drugstore in Lakeland, OH, a city west of Cleveland, thanking and celebrating, if you will--perhaps a strong word--CV's decision they announced last week that they would stop selling tobacco products at their 7,000 stores and pharmacies and that they would invest in a national smoking-cessation campaign designed to help people quit smoking. CVS's CEO said that is ``the right thing to do for customers and our company to help people on their path to better health ..... Put simply, the sale of tobacco is inconsistent with our purpose.''
That is good news.
In my State one in every five deaths is connected to tobacco. Ohio ranks sixth in the adult smoking rate, and 16,900 children in Ohio under 18 start smoking each year. The Presiding Officer knows what we know about tobacco. We know that every year in the United States of America 480,000 people die of tobacco-related illnesses. Do you know what else we know? Because 480,000 Americans die from tobacco-related illnesses, we know that the big tobacco company executives understand they have to find 480,000 new customers every year to buy their products.
The Presiding Officer knows there is nothing particular about his age or
mine, but they do not aim at people such as us. They do not aim at people in their forties, fifties, and sixties to get them to join to replace those 480,000 people who have passed away; they aim at people the age of our pages who are sitting in the well.
In fact, they don't aim at only 16- and 17-year-olds, they are aiming at Ð12-, 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds.
Joining me at CVS today were two young women, Shanisha Collins and Melissa Renton. They both smoke and are both working to quit smoking. Both are doing very well as they quit smoking. They both started smoking, they told us, as teenagers, and CVS is working with them in their smoking-cessation campaign.
We were also joined by Michael Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic who has done remarkable work in preventive care in a preventive medical practice, if you will, at the Cleveland Clinic. He is a heart doctor who also has done so well in various kinds of care to help people quit smoking, to help people lose weight, and to help people prevent diabetes--all of the preventive care he has worked on.
We were also joined by two nurse practitioners, Lauren and Molly, who as part of the CVS clinic have helped people do to better manage their health.
The point is CVS has made this decision. It isn't earth-shaking. Half of the cigarettes bought today are from gas stations, and that is not going to change much. Cigarettes are going to be available. It is a legal product. In fact, people should have the right to buy cigarettes if they choose to. But the point is tobacco companies shouldn't be able to target young people the way they do.
We have seen major progress. Fifty years ago the Surgeon General issued his groundbreaking report on the health effects of tobacco use. Look at the progress we have made. Some 42 percent of adults smoked cigarettes in 1965. Today 18 percent of adults smoke cigarettes. It has been a huge public health victory, and it has been a huge public health victory in small steps and large steps.
First, the report was very important. We remember as kids--the Presiding Officer is old enough to remember this, as I am--we could smoke anywhere in our society. State governments then began to prohibit smoking in public buildings and then began to prohibit smoking in other publicly owned buildings--government buildings. Then people couldn't smoke in public places in many States around the country.
We remember people used to smoke on airplanes. Then over time smoking was restricted to, I remember, aisles 18 to 35 or something--so you could smoke if you were in one of those aisles but not in a seat in front of that or behind that--whatever it was. Now smoking is banned on all flights. We have seen major progress made.
CVS is one step in that. We have sent a group of us led by Senator Harkin--Senator Blumenthal has been involved, and a number of others--asking the other drugstore chains--Walgreens and Right Aid--to do the same, to quit selling cigarettes there.
So we have seen progress, but it is still a major public health problem. In one of the places it is particularly a problem. I said at the beginning of my remarks that 480,000 people in America die from tobacco-related illnesses every year--heart diseases, cancer, a whole host of illnesses that are connected to smoking or chewing tobacco. So they aim at children, for sure, with their targeted campaigns, but they also go overseas. The tobacco companies are trying to undermine public health laws, particularly in poor countries around the world.
If someone is a public health official in India, they have to worry about cholera, malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS, child diarrhea. They have to worry about all the things that kill people prematurely in that country. When the tobacco companies come in--whether they are American companies, British companies or companies from any other country--they don't have much defense against that. That is why I know the Presiding Officer from Indiana has been a real leader in opposing bad trade policy for our country.
But one of the elements of a bad trade policy is giving U.S. tobacco companies too much power to go into far too many of these countries to cajole, threaten, and even undermine public health laws.
In fact, we have seen in more than one country--thought to be a poor country, without too many people, and that does not have many public resources, and where people are very poor--we have seen tobacco companies threaten those countries that are about to enact a health care law, and that country backs off because they don't have the dollars or the resources to fight the tobacco companies' efforts in court.
We have a lot of work to do.
I wanted to share what happened today in Lakewood, OH, with my colleagues, how important it is, and what a huge public health victory. Again, I want to emphasize how successful these efforts to curb the use of tobacco are--the greatest preventable killer in the country--and how successful we have been. More than 40 percent of people smoked in 1965 and today fewer than 20 percent. That is because of a partnership among government, local officials, public health officials, the American Cancer Society, and the American Heart Association. So many of these organizations have stepped up in a way that has mattered--the American Lung Association and others--to protect the public interest and especially to protect children.
I applaud the efforts of that company and the efforts of so many of my colleagues who have been working on this issue.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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