Child Nicotine Addiction

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise today to call attention to a dangerous complacency that threatens the health and the lives of our children, and I rise today to urge our administration to take long overdue action to protect our children.

Two years ago this month, the Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, released a proposed tobacco deeming rule, which is a blueprint for a regulatory framework for e-cigarettes and other tobacco products. Administration officials believed and conveyed that the final rule would be out by the end of the summer 2015. Well, the summer of 2015 is now history, and soon it will be the summer of 2016, and we wait. We have been waiting a very long time.

In total, it has been 7 years since the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was passed by the Senate and the House and signed by President Obama. This legislation gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products.

This legislation was sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy. It was passed in the final months of his life. It was a tribute to his long advocacy for the regulatory control of tobacco--a dangerous, destructive drug widespread throughout America. The passage was part of his legacy. But now we are failing that legacy, and we are failing millions of our children.

When the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was passed into law, it was heralded as a major victory, giving the FDA real power to crack down on the marketing of tobacco products to our children. After a year, there is no action--2 years, no action. That took us to 2011--3 years, no action; 4 years, no action; 5 years, no action; 6 years, no action; 7 years, no action. Over the course of those 7 years, a lot more Americans have become addicted to nicotine products.

In 7 years, the industry has had time to develop new innovative products to entrap our youth, and they have utilized that time well. How much longer will this inaction continue while our children are addicted to products newly invented and aimed directly at them? Each passing month, thousands of children become addicted to these new products. Each passing month, the nicotine addiction industry becomes more deeply entrenched and determined to prevent the regulation that we authorized back in 2009. It has been said that while Nero fiddled, Rome burned. In this situation, while the administration has failed to act, millions of children have become addicted to nicotine, with profound consequences for their health.

Once this rule is final, the FDA will be able to regulate new tobacco products in important ways, including imposing minimum age standards, limits on advertising, health warnings on the products, child-proof packaging, and requiring the registration of tobacco product manufacturers by the FDA and FDA approval of some novel products.

It is time to get this done because lives are at stake. We all are familiar with the cycle: Tobacco use leads to tobacco addiction. Tobacco addiction leads to disease. Disease leads to suffering and often to death. In fact, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States--the leading cause. It imposes a terrible toll on health and lives and dollars. It affects families and businesses and government.

So the best way to improve the health of Americans 10, 20, 30 years into the future or 40 years down the line is to stop the process by which this industry is targeting our youth. Here is what they know. They know that after the age of 21, very few people become addicted to nicotine. It is a product that people try in their youth, and with repeated use they become addicted to it and then continue, normally for years and years. That makes for a very good customer of the tobacco industry, a very good customer of the nicotine industry, and very bad consequences for the health of our children, who become our young adults, who become our middle-aged adults--very bad costs for health at each stage.

According to a Surgeon General's report released in March 2012, tobacco use among youth is a ``pediatric epidemic.'' But the thing is that our children just aren't starting to smoke because of happenstance. No, they are aggressively targeted by the tobacco industry. Big Tobacco is working day and night to design products to appeal to kids, to get them hooked on this deadly habit so that they will be reliable consumers or reliable customers.

In fact, the industry calls them ``replacement smokers.'' The products we supplied before have resulted in a whole lot of our customers dying. So we need replacement smokers; we need replacement consumers.

This clearly is a product with great harm associated with it. There are cigars, cigarillos, tobacco candy, snus, and e-cigarettes, and the list goes on and on. Products cost often as little as 99 cents and are sold in colorful or cool packaging, and nowhere is that more true than in the burgeoning e-cigarette industry.

This chart shows very readily the strategy of using candy flavors and fruit flavors targeted at kids. They have everything from cherry and watermelon, and the list continues with all kinds of--check this out-- gummy bear flavors. When you advertise e-cigarette flavors like gummy bears, you are not targeting people over 21. You are targeting our children. You are targeting them with bubble gum flavor and wild cherry flavor and candy apple flavor. These flavors are not for adults. They mask the taste of the product and make it more tempting, more exciting for our young people.

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Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Chair.

This is an actual container, like these containers that are shown on the poster. This is called JJuice. They call it juice. They put juice in the title, as if to imply it is healthy. This is liquid nicotine targeted at our children with all of these kinds of flavors.

This particular container was a response to the advocacy of myself and others to say that this targeting of our children is not OK. So the industry decided to create a ``Senator's Choice'' flavor, and they call this flavor ``the greatest blend to date'' using ``the purist, highest quality liquid essence of guava, combin[ing] it with all-natural, American-made raw ingredients.'' It is almost like a review of a fine wine, this ``Senator's Choice.'' Again, they created this specifically to protest the fact that Senators were standing up and saying that this targeting of children is not OK. It is immoral, and it is wrong. We have a law in place to end it, but the administration must act or that law has no impact.

What is actually in this? Well, the ingredients list does not have essence of guava on the ingredient list. It has glycerin and propylene glycol, nicotine, and artificial flavorings, which somehow doesn't sound nearly as nice as the description on their Web site.

Let's see the impact of this targeting of our youth because, unfortunately, Big Tobacco's--the nicotine addiction industry-- strategies work. That is why they are continuing to employ them. High school e-cigarette use tripled in just 1 year, from 2013 at 4.5 percent to 2014 at 13.4 percent. When we have the numbers for 2015, I am sure we will find that it is substantially higher because of this aggressive marketing campaign aimed at our junior high and high school students.

Nearly one in seven high school students have used an e-cigarette in the last 30 days. That represents 2 million of our children--2 million of our teenagers nationwide.

An updated CDC study released recently confirmed that youth tobacco use is continuing to grow. Our children are not using e-cigarettes to quit smoking; they are using e-cigarettes to start smoking. So when the industry claims that all of these e-cigarettes are improving the health of those who currently use cigarettes, it is another tobacco industry big lie. Big Tobacco brings us another big lie. Children are using these products to start smoking, not to stop smoking. Every day that we don't act, more of our children are at risk for a lifetime of tobacco and nicotine addiction.

The choice is simple. Let's end this irresponsible inaction. Let's stop enriching the multibillion-dollar tobacco industry by continuing to delay the regulations authorized back in 2009. Let's do the right thing for America's children. Let's assist our children in living longer, healthier, happier lives by ending the targeting by Big Tobacco.

Thank you, Madam President.

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