Orrin Hatch: “All right. Our colleague from Massachusetts also suggested we can use the Canadian experience to predict American youth…”

“All right. Our colleague from Massachusetts also suggested we can use the Canadian experience to predict American youth behavior. If true, then American and Canadian youths smoke for the same reasons-- peer pressure and status. Many experts agree that status smoking, like $150 tennis shoes, is far less price sensitive. Even a $1.50 price increase will fail in head-to-head competition with ads like this in Sports Illustrated for Camel. Here is an attractive model smoking a cigarette--``What you're looking for'' the advertisement says. The fact of the matter is that many members of the scientific and medical communities do not see as essential a price increase of up $1.50. Is the Senator aware that after following 13,000 kids for 4 years, Dr. Philip DeCicca of Cornell University, in a National Cancer Institute funded study--a National Cancer Institute funded study, a public health study, if you will--found ``Little evidence that taxes reduce smoking onset between 8th and 12th grade''? Are you aware of that?”