Kent Conrad: “we started debate on this bill weeks and weeks ago here on the floor of the Senate. We started action on this bill…”

“we started debate on this bill weeks and weeks ago here on the floor of the Senate. We started action on this bill months ago in the Commerce Committee. I think we may have forgotten that we started real action nearly a year ago. It was on June 20 of last year that there was an agreement announced between the attorneys general and the tobacco industry. That was the basis that led Congress to act. We are talking 1 year. On June 20 of 1997, the attorneys general entered into an agreement with the tobacco industry. Here we are, June 16 of 1998, and we still haven't acted. Now some are saying we shouldn't act. The majority leader said over the weekend that he thought this bill was dead. Well, he has said that about every week. About every week there is an announcement by the majority leader, the bill is dead. He said that when it was still in the Commerce Committee, yet it came out of the Commerce Committee on a 19-1 vote. Mr. President, I remind my colleagues that this has been going on for a year because that has special importance. We are talking about 3,000 young people who take up the habit every day--3,000. Over a year, that is over a million kids who have taken up the habit of smoking and the use of tobacco products. And we know that one-third of them will die prematurely as a result.”