Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to thank Senator Merkley for organizing this event this afternoon and Senators Blumenthal and Markey for their work on this. Smoking produces corporate profits, period. There is the heart of the problem of e-cigarettes. Long after the science showed that cigarette smoking kills, long after the industry denied and denied, long after millions of people died from smoking- related cancers and heart disease, this country finally got serious about cutting smoking rates. Much of our attention has been focused on ways to keep the industry from hooking young people, and it is a good approach: If you don't start, you don't have to quit. For decades now public health experts have worked to reduce smoking and to keep kids and teens from becoming addicted to cigarettes. Congress passed the laws and implemented regulations that restricted access for teens. We increased tobacco taxes, and we clamped down on marketing to kids. State and local governments along with the private sector limited smoking in public. Those combined efforts worked. Since the late 1990s, the youth smoking rate has been cut by more than 50 percent. The most recent effort in Congress to address this issue was the passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The late Senator Ted Kennedy fought for years and years to give the FDA authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco.…”