I’d like to highlight some of the key differences between tobacco legislation I introduced, which will wipe out tobacco use in America in the next 20 years, and a Democrat bill that would require regulation of tobacco products by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Tobacco kills. We need new ideas to get people to stop smoking, or better yet, never to start. That’s what my legislation does. The Democrat alternative just preserves the status quo for Big Tobacco, and at the end of the day, it throws away a lot of money.
I introduced the “Help End Addiction to Lethal Tobacco Habits Act
Imagine an America without tobacco. An America where Big Tobacco couldn’t lure your children into a deadly habit. An America where your friends and loved ones didn’t tragically die young from the effects of this poison. And an America where your medical costs would be significantly lower without tobacco-related illnesses. That’s an America I’d like to live in – wouldn’t you?
My bill would establish an innovative cap-and-trade program that will shrink the size of the tobacco market over 20 years, by reducing the size of the tobacco market from 21 percent of Americans to 2 percent of the population.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Democrat bill would have no impact on adult smoking, and would only reduce youth smoking by a mere 12.5 percent.
My bill would also utilize strong, bold warnings on tobacco product packaging to convey the truth in no uncertain terms about these deadly products.
Other countries have discovered innovative ways to re-emphasize the risks of tobacco. Their warnings work. If your children are thinking about taking up this deadly habit, I want them to have a bit of a shock when they look at the package. And smokers should think about these health messages each time they light up.
2. The Democrat bill requires FDA to regulate tobacco and nicotine, but specifically denies FDA the authority to ban these deadly products. My anti-tobacco bill preserves FDA’s current authority to pull all deadly products from the market.
The FDA approves cures, not poisons. It cannot be forced into the position of approving products we all know are dangerous, without also having the authority to ban these products.
The Democrat bill would gut the authority that Congress has bestowed and staunchly defended for the FDA – the authority to remove health threats from the marketplace. My bill does not require FDA to regulate tobacco, but it does give the agency the explicit authority to remove these products from the market, just as FDA has authority to remove deadly drugs and devices from the market.
3. The Democrat bill attempts to create a “safer cigarette.