Yesterday evening, the House of Representatives approved an ill-conceived bill to force the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to abandon its core mission – making sure that the foods we eat and the medicines we take are safe.  The bill would gut the authority that Congress has bestowed and staunchly defended for the FDA – the authority to remove health threats from the marketplace. Instead, this bill would require that FDA use its limited resources and staff to regulate and approve products that we all know, when used properly, will kill you – cigarettes.

This so-called “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” H.R. 1108, would, in fact, coddle Big Tobacco while protecting the industry’s best tools to recruit and addict your children to tobacco.  That’s why the nation’s largest cigarette maker – Philip Morris – helped write the bill and is one of its strongest supporters.

Trying to make cigarettes safer through a billion-dollar bureaucracy is a waste of time and money.  The right approach is to get people to stop smoking, or better yet, never to start. Big Tobacco supports this bill because it will not stop anyone from smoking.

Tobacco is one of the biggest contributors to our nation’s growing health care crisis.  We need to fight the war on tobacco head on, not sign a peace treaty with Philip Morris, a company that perpetuates and profits from the crisis.  Big Tobacco supports this bill because they have a stake in maintaining the status quo.  I don’t. They’re happy with a bill that doesn’t stop people from smoking; I’m not.  I want real change, so I’m going to fight this bill and its Big Tobacco backers by objecting to it in the Senate.

This bill would allow Big Tobacco to continue its aggressive marketing to kids by exempting menthol from a list of banned flavorings.  Menthol is used by Big Tobacco to target and lure young smokers, particularly African-Americans.  Last year, during HELP Committee consideration of this bill, I filed several amendments addressing the menthol issue.  Folks need to understand this glaring loophole in the bill and how it puts our children at risk.

We know that Big Tobacco targets children and teenagers – particularly young African-Americans – by aggressively marketing menthol cigarettes to them.  So why does this bill ban almost every type of flavoring in tobacco products except menthol?  Supporters of this bill claim they want to protect children and families from unscrupulous tobacco companies, but the only people this approach protects is Big Tobacco.

Poison peddlers shouldn’t get to decide how we fight the war against their deadly products. I urge my friends in the public health community not to become so desperate to do something about the tobacco problem in this country that they fall for this wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Keep asking yourself: if this bill is good for Big Tobacco, how can it be good for public health?  The fact is it can’t.  This bill is nothing more than a “Marlboro Protection Act,” written to keep Philip Morris at the top of the tobacco market.

If my colleagues are serious about saving the lives that are lost each year from tobacco use, and protecting our children from these deadly products, I would urge them to consider a bill I introduced last year to wipe out tobacco use in America through an innovative cap-and-trade program that will shrink the size of the tobacco market over the next 20 years.

Tobacco kills.  We need new ideas to tackle tobacco use.  That’s what my legislation does.

My proposal, the “Help End Addiction to Lethal Tobacco Habits Act” (HEALTH Act), S. 1834, would also close loopholes in the law that tobacco companies have exploited and enjoyed for far too long.  It would use proven approaches to help people stop using tobacco products and implement tried and true prevention programs.

It’s time to get serious about fighting tobacco.  The House bill doesn’t do that, but my bill does.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Politics .