THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

President Clinton's Plan for Comprehensive Tobacco Legislation to Protect America's Children

September 17, 1997

Today, President Clinton challenged Congress to pass sweeping tobacco legislation to significantly reduce teen tobacco use. The President announced that he will invite Congressional leaders to the White House in the coming weeks to launch a bipartisan effort to enact federal tobacco legislation. That legislation will build on the extraordinary efforts of the nation's attorneys general, who helped create an historic opportunity for progress in reducing smoking, especially by youth.

In August 1996, the Clinton Administration announced a landmark rule by the Food and Drug Administration to protect children from the harm caused by tobacco products. This rule was largely upheld by a federal judge in North Carolina earlier this year. Those victories for the public health, along with the aggressive efforts of the attorneys general and leaders of the public health community, drove tobacco companies to the bargaining table and extracted concessions that would have been unimaginable just a short time ago.

Since a proposed national settlement was announced June 20, the Administration -- led by Vice President Gore, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and Domestic Policy Advisor Bruce Reed -- has been working with the public health community, the attorneys general, members of Congress, tobacco farmers, and others to develop a comprehensive tobacco policy.

Today, the President announced five key elements that must be at the heart of any national tobacco legislation:

1. A Comprehensive Plan to Reduce Teen Smoking, Including Tough Penalties If Targets Are Not Met. Every day, 3,000 young people start smoking regularly, and 1,000 of them will die early as a result. The central goal of tobacco legislation must be a comprehensive, nationwide effort to reduce teen smoking.

The Administration is calling for:

• Tough Penalties and Price Increases to Reduce Teen Smoking: The Administration believes tobacco legislation must include stiff penalties that give the tobacco industry the strongest possible incentive to stop targeting kids. Legislation should set ambitious targets to cut teen smoking by 30% in 5 years, 50% in 7 years, and 60% in 10 years, and impose severe financial penalties that hold tobacco companies accountable to meet those targets. The Administration supports penalties that are non-deductible, uncapped, and escalating -- so that the penalties get stiffer and the price goes up the more that companies miss the targets. Reducing youth smoking is the Administration's bottom line, and now it must be the industry's bottom line.

One of the surest ways to reduce youth smoking is to increase the price of cigarettes. By some estimates, a 10% increase in cigarette prices will lead to a 7% drop in youth smoking. Today, the President called for a combination of industry payments and penalties to increase the price of cigarettes by up to $1.50 a pack over the next decade as necessary to meet the youth smoking reduction targets.

• A Public Education and Counter Advertising Campaign: To succeed in reducing youth smoking, legislation must provide for a nationwide effort to deglamorize tobacco, warn young people of its addictive nature and deadly consequences, and help parents discourage their children from taking up the habit. Legislation should provide for a public education and counter advertising campaign, as well as state and local prevention efforts. The Administration also supports stronger, more visible warning labels on tobacco products.
• Expanded Efforts to Restrict Access and Limit Appeal: The current FDA rule includes significant measures to reduce youth access to tobacco products (such as requiring retailers to check photo identification of anyone under 27) and to limit the advertising of tobacco to young people (such as restricting advertising near school buildings). The Administration supports legislation codifying these measures, imposing even stronger restrictions on youth access and advertising consistent with the Constitution, and establishing an effective retail licensing scheme with tough penalties. 2. Full Authority for FDA to Regulate Tobacco Products. In 1996, the Administration took the historic step of asserting FDA jurisdiction over tobacco products. Since that time, the Administration has said it would support federal legislation explicitly affirming the FDA's authority to regulate the manufacture, marketing, and sale of tobacco products. Under such legislation, the FDA's authority over tobacco products must be as effective as its authority over other drugs and devices, and must be sufficiently flexible to meet changing circumstances. The legislation should not impose any obligation on the FDA to make specific findings about such speculative matters as the creation of contraband markets; nor should it impose any special procedural hurdles or requirements, such as enhanced standards of proof or unusual evidentiary formalities. 3. Changes in the Way the Tobacco Industry Does Business. Federal tobacco legislation must include measures to expose the industry's past misconduct, especially its efforts to market products to children, and to change the way the industry does business.
• No Marketing to Children: Commitments by the industry -- such as agreements to limit advertising to children -- can serve to recognize the need for increased corporate responsibility. Today, the President reiterated his call to the tobacco industry to stop marketing and promoting tobacco to children.
• Document Disclosure: To ensure that patterns of corporate malfeasance are disclosed and effectively checked in the future, tobacco legislation must provide for broad disclosure of industry documents, especially those containing scientific or other health information or relating to the industry's attempts to market tobacco to children. This legislation should respect essential principles of attorney-client privilege. But the legislation should establish effective mechanisms to turn over to the public all non-privileged documents, including documents the industry has inappropriately claimed to be privileged, as well as to disclose scientific and health-related information in even privileged documents.
• Corporate Compliance: Tobacco companies should set up comprehensive corporate compliance programs that will reinforce the real economic incentives provided by the youth smoking penalties to discourage companies from marketing to children. The legislation should establish oversight mechanisms to investigate and monitor corporate compliance and to make recommendations to Congress on appropriate future legislation. 4. Progress Toward Other Public Health Goals. Federal tobacco legislation provides an opportunity not only to reduce youth smoking, but to meet other public health goals: the reduction of environmental (second-hand) tobacco smoke, the expansion of smoking cessation programs, the strengthening of international efforts to control tobacco, and the provision of funds for health research and other health objectives.
• Second-Hand Smoke: The best scientific studies show that restrictions on second-hand smoke reduce the risk of death and injury to non-smokers, including the hundreds of thousands of children with asthma and other respiratory illness, and lead many smokers to quit the habit. Federal tobacco legislation should include provisions to restrict smoking in workplaces and other public facilities of the kind found in H.R. 3434, as well as in the President's recent Executive Order on tobacco smoke in federal facilities.
• Smoking Cessation Programs: Data suggests that some 70% of smokers want to quit, but fewer than 3% each year successfully do so. Legislation should help enable smoking cessation services to reach and assist the millions of smokers who want to break their addiction to tobacco products.
• International Leadership: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco use now causes 3 million deaths a year worldwide; unless checked, that number will rise to 10 million by 2025, with 70% of annual deaths occurring in developing countries. Legislation should strengthen global and bilateral efforts to reduce smoking by providing assistance to international institutions.
• Resources for Health Research and Other Health Care Objectives: The Administration believes that the primary objective of tobacco legislation is to reduce youth smoking, not to raise money. But tobacco legislation also should take into account the health costs associated with smoking and the resulting need for public health investments. Legislation should generate sufficient resources to establish a health research fund and contribute significantly to other important health objectives. In addition, Congress should repeal the provision giving the tobacco industry a $50 billion credit. 5. Protection for Tobacco Farmers and Their Communities. The President made clear today that any tobacco legislation must protect tobacco farmers and their communities. Most tobacco farmers live and work on small family farms; in many cases, their families have been growing tobacco for generations. In some states, entire communities rely on income from the tobacco crop. The Administration is committed to working with members of Congress in both parties to ensure that we protect the financial well-being of tobacco farmers, their families, and their communities.