This is historical material, "frozen in time." The web site is no longer updated and links to external web sites and some internal pages will not work.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President

For Immediate Release June 25, 1998

                  STATEMENT OF VICE PRESIDENT GORE
                   ON HOUSE REPUBLICAN FRAMEWORK 
                    FOR NEW TOBACCO LEGISLATION

House Republican leaders have made the same wrong choice as their Senate counterparts: to do what the tobacco lobby wants, not what America's parents want.

Three thousand young people start smoking every day, and one thousand of them will die early as a result. A bill written by the tobacco industry won't save children's lives, and it won't save the political lives of the politicians who are cynically promoting it, either.

A bipartisan majority of Senators supports comprehensive legislation to raise the price of cigarettes in order to reduce teen smoking, give the FDA full authority over tobacco products, and impose heavy surcharges on tobacco companies that keep marketing cigarettes to young people. The only thing the House Republican bill does about teen smoking is to the tobacco industry keep getting away with it.

###