Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much. That was a very moving statement to me. No one knows exactly why, but, for whatever reason, we know…”

“Thank you very much. That was a very moving statement to me. No one knows exactly why, but, for whatever reason, we know that teen smoking has, in fact, been on the rise. And the overwhelming--I say again, we can't lose sight of the big issue; the overwhelming evidence is that 3,000 children begin to smoke every day, and 1,000 of them will have their life shortened because of it, and that the rest of us as taxpayers will pay enormously for them. But the most important cost is human, not economic. And the question is whether we can pursue a reasonable course to deal with that and deal with the human reality of the livelihood and the life and the structure of life that all these fine people have been talking around the table and have described today. I think the answer is yes. And as I said, I think, ironically, trying to preserve the structure will actually--since no one suggested tobacco is not a legal crop and that adults should not be free to buy it, that that is not a position advocated by anybody--nobody's advocating prohibition here--ironically, it seems to me, that our objectives in reducing teen smoking by making it both more expensive and less attractive in other ways, and dealing with the advertising is actually furthered by preserving this program because it will reduce production and keep the price up. If you abolish the program, you put a lot of these folks out of business, but you will not reduce production. You'll probably increase production, lower the price of tobacco and, therefore, make cigarettes cheaper, notwithstanding whatever we do with the tax or a voluntary payment or whatever we wind up calling it when Congress acts. So anyway, I thank you for that. Secretary Glickman, would you like to say anything? [Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman described his visits to Kentucky and efforts underway to deal with the situation, saying that he was considering economic development options rather than alternative crop programs as a significant part of the solution.]”