Kent Conrad: “while we are waiting, I thought I would just go through what I call the top 10 tobacco ``tall tales'' that we have heard…”

“while we are waiting, I thought I would just go through what I call the top 10 tobacco ``tall tales'' that we have heard from the tobacco industry during this debate. Tall tale No. 1 was that tobacco has no ill-health effects. Remember that? They came up to the Capitol, and they put up their hands, and they swore under oath that these products did not cause ill-health effects. But then we got the documents. We got them because of court action. We got access to the documents, and we found out, in the industry's own words, what the truth is. Here is the truth on that claim that tobacco has no ill-health effects: Boy! Wouldn't it be wonderful if our company was first to produce a cancer-free cigarette. What we could do to the competition. This is from a mid-1950s Hill & Knowlton memo quoting an unnamed tobacco company research director. That is tall tale No. 1. Tall tale No. 2 is, again, tobacco has no ill-health effects. Again, we have an industry document that reveals the falsity of that claim. This is from a 1978 Brown & Williamson document that says: ``Very few customers are aware of the effects of nicotine, i.e., its addictive nature and that nicotine is a poison.''”