Dick Durbin: “I rise to mark the 5-year anniversary of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. This legislation was a…”

“I rise to mark the 5-year anniversary of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. This legislation was a landmark in the decades-long fight against the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States--tobacco use. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act passed in 2009--15 years after Dr. Kessler, the FDA Commissioner, began trying to regulate tobacco and 45 years after the Surgeon General's landmark report on tobacco use and lung cancer. For the first time in history, this law gave the FDA the authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and sale of tobacco products. One express aim of the law was to reduce rates of tobacco use among children. The law achieved this by restricting sales to minors, banning flavored cigarettes, banning tobacco-brand sponsorships of sport and entertainment events, banning free samples, restricting advertisements to children, and more. The results speak for themselves. Just this month, the CDC reported that cigarette smoking among U.S. high school students has dropped to the lowest level in 22 years. According to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the percentage of students who reported smoking a cigarette in the last 30 days fell from 27.5 percent in 1991 to 15.7 percent in 2013. In Illinois, the percentage of students who are current smokers dropped by more than half between 1993 and 2013.…”