Regulating Tobacco

Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Thank you, Mr. President.

I would like to thank Senator Merkley for organizing this event this afternoon and Senators BLUMENTHAL and MARKEY for their work on this.

Smoking produces corporate profits, period. There is the heart of the problem of e-cigarettes. Long after the science showed that cigarette smoking kills, long after the industry denied and denied, long after millions of people died from smoking-related cancers and heart disease, this country finally got serious about cutting smoking rates.

Much of our attention has been focused on ways to keep the industry from hooking young people, and it is a good approach: If you don't start, you don't have to quit. For decades now public health experts have worked to reduce smoking and to keep kids and teens from becoming addicted to cigarettes. Congress passed the laws and implemented regulations that restricted access for teens. We increased tobacco taxes, and we clamped down on marketing to kids. State and local governments along with the private sector limited smoking in public. Those combined efforts worked. Since the late 1990s, the youth smoking rate has been cut by more than 50 percent.

The most recent effort in Congress to address this issue was the passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The late Senator Ted Kennedy fought for years and years to give the FDA authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco. I stand at his desk today to continue this fight because the law was passed but our Federal agencies have still not fully implemented it, and the tobacco industry continues to target young people.

The industry profits from getting kids hooked early, so it finds every way it can to undermine all the other work we have done to keep kids from getting hooked on nicotine. Because it is harder now to get kids hooked with cigarettes, the industry has turned to e-cigarettes.

Six years after the Tobacco Control Act was passed, the regulations that deem e-cigarettes as tobacco products and make them subject to all of the rules in that bill have still not been finalized. As a result, e-cigarettes remain virtually unregulated at the Federal level--no age limits, no marketing restrictions, nothing but a splotchy patchwork of State and local restrictions. Even though most states ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, this is not enough to combat the deliberate and well-financed work of the tobacco industry to hook another generation of kids on their products.

Now, an investigation last year by House and Senate leaders revealed how the tobacco industry is marketing their products to kids. It found that the industry is following the exact same practices of marketing to kids and teens that addicted a generation to cigarettes decades ago. Tobacco companies market e-cigs with cartoons and Santa Claus. They show popular celebrities and beautiful models using e-cigs.

Tobacco companies push e-cigs in flavors designed to appeal to kids--flavors like cherry crush and chocolate treat. Tobacco companies provide free samples at concerts and other youth-oriented events. Tobacco companies advertise on television shows and radio programs that attract large audiences of teens and preteens. To bring it all into the digital age, tobacco companies use all of these tactics online and on social media.

The tobacco industry has done all of this before. It is having the same result. According to the CDC, e-cigarette use by middle schoolers--that is sixth, seventh, and eighth graders--and high school students tripled in 2014 alone. New data released yesterday shows that 21.6 percent of young adults 18 to 24 have used an e-cigarette.

For teens, e-cig use is now greater than the use of all other tobacco products. Look, the tobacco industry is up to its old tricks, but we are not going to fall for them again. After more than 6 years since the passage of the Tobacco Control Act, the Federal Government is finally on the cusp of regulations to rein in the industry's e-cigarette marketing efforts. Every day that goes by without this regulation, the tobacco industry hooks more kids.

We need a strong rule today, and that is why I join my colleagues to urge the Office of Management and Budget to act without delay and to release this important regulation. It is time--no, it is past time to take action, time to push back against the tobacco industry, time to stand up for our families' health.

I yield the floor.

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