Mark Udall: “Again asking my colleague to yield, I would note that the President certainly is a proponent of Federalism. He certainly…”

“Again asking my colleague to yield, I would note that the President certainly is a proponent of Federalism. He certainly has taken the position in many cases that the States ought to have an important role in a lot of the decisions that are made in our country, and this suggestion that my colleague has brought up in his letter, I think, fits his philosophical approach, and bringing in the experts to work on behalf of all of the Americans and the attorney generals as my colleague suggests, Democrat, Republican, covering the whole political ideological spectrum, I think the gentleman mentioned 45 of them joined this case. I would just urge the President to again look at the gentleman's letter. I am hopeful that we will have a response from him sooner rather than later. If I might, since we were talking about the costs, I might touch on that one more time. It is easy to say these are other people's problems. It is easy to say we are all adults, and if one decides to smoke, they should bear some of the responsibility. There is some truth in both of those statements, but we are talking about doing all we can to make sure that children are not targeted. Children who begin smoking are much more likely to remain smokers throughout their lives. Even if we feel there is some responsibility that adults have, and we do have those responsibilities, the costs that are incurred we all have to bear. We can acknowledge those costs or turn a blind eye to those costs.”