Regulating Tobacco

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Merkley, thank you for organizing this. Thank you to Senator Warren and to everyone who is here.

Mr. President, with Halloween just days away, I would like to share some scary facts about nicotine. Nicotine is the main ingredient in cigarettes and is also found in the new cigarettes, the e-cigarettes.

Four decades of scientific research have proved the following: First, nicotine is addictive; second, nicotine affects brain development; third, nicotine combined with tobacco is responsible for claiming millions of lives.

These facts are true, but for years Big Tobacco willfully, consistently, publicly, and falsely denied them. Those lies were exposed at congressional hearings, and thanks to the tireless efforts of anti-smoking and public health advocates, traditional cigarette smoking has declined from 50 percent of all adults to 18 percent of all adults in the United States. How many millions of lives have been saved because of that?

Big Tobacco and the e-cigarette industry are like the undead. Traditional cigarettes are being supplanted by e-cigarettes. Today e-cigarette sales in the United States alone topped $1 billion, and e-cigarette use is growing as fast as the students who are smoking them. The use of e-cigarettes among middle and high school students has skyrocketed, tripling from 2013 to 2014, accounting for upwards of 13 percent of all high school students. That is when my father began to smoke two packs of Camels a day. My father died from smoking two packs of Camels a day.

Nearly 2.5 million young Americans currently use e-cigarettes. Why the explosion in youth e-cigarette smoking? It is because Big Tobacco and the e-cigarette industry are marketing their dangerous nicotine delivery product to children and teens.

Big Tobacco would have our young people think that e-cigarettes are a treat, but they are a cruel trick on those children. The younger a person is when he or she starts using products containing nicotine, the more difficult it is to quit.

We know from years of research that flavors attract young people. That is why Congress explicitly banned cigarettes with flavors like cherry and bubble gum, because of their appeal to young people. So it is very disappointing, but not surprising, that new nicotine delivery products are available in a myriad of flavors, from cotton candy to vanilla cupcake to Coca-Cola.

I wonder what this industry is trying to do. Flavors were outlawed from the traditional cigarette industry. You don't have to be a detective to figure it out because over the past decade we have made great strides in educating children and teens about the dangers of smoking, and now we can't allow e-cigarettes to snuff out the progress we have made in preventing nicotine addiction and its deadly consequences.

We need to ban the marketing of e-cigarettes to kids and teens. We need to ban the use of fruit and candy flavoring clearly meant to attract children. We need to ban the online sales of e-cigarettes to keep them out of the hands of children. The dangers of e-cigarettes are clear. Every day we wait is another day that young Americans can fall prey to harmful products pushed by the tobacco industry.

Last year at a commerce committee hearing, when I asked several e-cigarette company leaders to commit to ceasing the sale of these types of flavored products, a few agreed, but the vast majority have not and will not. Just today the e-cigarette industry trade group, the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, threatened the FDA after posting on its Web site what the association purports is leaked draft industry guidance under the new deeming rule, tweeting: ``The FDA needs to know we mean business.''

The association got it partially right. The e-cigarette industry should be put out of business.

My father smoked two packs of Camels a day. Back then it was a cool thing to do. For decades Big Tobacco denied that there was any linkage between smoking and cancer. My father died because of that denial of the tobacco industry and the cooperation of the U.S. Congress.

Today electronic cigarettes are no better than the Joe Camels of the past. Through e-cigarettes, children and teens are still getting addicted to nicotine and putting their health and futures at grave risk.

I urge OMB to give America's youth a real Halloween treat by finalizing the deeming rule and stopping the sale of these candy-flavored poisons.

Thank you, and I yield back.

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