Bill Clinton: “Well, I think we have to do several things. I think, first of all, the Government's responsibility is to make sure that…”

“Well, I think we have to do several things. I think, first of all, the Government's responsibility is to make sure that the young people understand that it's addictive and dangerous and can kill them and that about one-third of the young people who start smoking every day--about 1,000 people a day, young people, start smoking who will have their lives shortened because of it. The second thing I think you have to do is make it less accessible. Then the third thing we have to do is make it less attractive, that is, we need to change the advertising and limit the ability of advertising to be a lure. We had a young teenager in here who was part of an antismoking group yesterday who said to me--I was so touched--she said, ``We look at these TV ads,'' she said, ``these girls smoking, they're always tall; they're always thin; they always have long hair; they're always pretty.'' She said, ``It's just like when the boys who are young see a movie star holding a gun.'' And it was shocking what she said. And then what we want the tobacco companies to do is to spend some money on an affirmative strategy to put out positive messages--over MTV, for example--about how it's cool not to smoke instead of to smoke. So I think you make it less accessible, less attractive, and then put out a positive message. And of course, we need a lot of help. We need people like you to do programs like this, and every parent in this country needs to talk to their children--all the parents need to talk to their children about it, because we now have done 14 months careful research and we know how damaging this is, and we know that the tobacco companies know how damaging it is from their own files. We've got to do something about it. Ms. Soren. Do you worry about making smoking more enticing by making it more forbidden to young people?”