Political Quotes

“I join him today in offering this amendment, because it is time for our Government to stop subsidizing death. That is really what this is all about. A government subsidy to promote the growth of tobacco makes as little sense as a government subsidy to promote the production of the plants and the seeds from which strychnine is derived. In either case, it uses public money to deliver poison to the American people. The only difference is that the tobacco kills a little more slowly and a little more painfully than the strychnine. And tobacco ultimately costs our American taxpayers literally billions of dollars in additional health and disability claims that we end up having to pay rather than a swift strychnine death. Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in this country. Yet there are people on this floor today opposing this amendment who are at this moment expending public money to promote the production of even more tobacco. Some 80 percent of adult smokers begin as children in their smoking habits. That is why it has been described as a pediatric disease by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Every day more than 3,000 young people take up smoking.”