Political Quotes

“Madam President, if you look at the marketing plan of Big Tobacco in America over the last half-century, it is very obvious: Tobacco companies sell an addictive product. There is a chemical included in the tobacco--nicotine--which is highly addictive. To be successful, they have to convince people to take up smoking, even though it is dangerous to their health and is a product that is difficult to quit. How do they achieve that goal? They prey on children, and they always have. Kids start smoking at an early age, and if the tobacco companies have their way, it leads to an addiction for a lifetime--a compromise on a person's health and even their death. Over the years, I have done battle with Big Tobacco. The first, I guess, exchange was over banning smoking on airplanes. It seems so long ago, but we were successful, and we really changed the national conversation on tobacco. More and more people became sensitive to the fact that tobacco companies were, in fact, exploiting our children, addicting them to their product, and steps were taken at every level-- local, State, and Federal--to stop that from happening, and it worked. The number of children in America who are addicted to tobacco-related products began to decline precipitously. Big Tobacco was in a panic. They were losing their market share. Kids weren't taking up tobacco smoking the way they had in the past, and so they devised and invented new products.…”