John Hansen: “here we go again, confusing the public. I have never seen anything that confuses the public more than what we are doing…”

“here we go again, confusing the public. I have never seen anything that confuses the public more than what we are doing right now. We spend $177 million to warn people of the use of this tobacco product. Then on the other hand here we are guaranteeing to subsidize the product. It is interesting, another statistic that I recently pulled out. We are spending $50 billion in health care in America to take care of this particular product. But we are still going to subsidize it. We confuse the public a little more. We now find out that more lives are lost due to this product than murder, suicide, AIDS, alcohol and car accidents combined. Still here we go again, let us subsidize the product. Is it a lucrative product? You bet it is. This amendment that we are working on does not affect the no net cost tobacco price support program for Federal Extension Services. Tobacco farmers are still able to grow tobacco and will still be able to sell it to the tobacco companies. This amendment is simply putting our agricultural policy in line with our health policy. I urge support for the amendment.”