Congress to protect Children from Tobacco Products
In a speech on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln urged her colleagues to support legislation that will implement much-needed marketing restrictions on tobacco companies that target has a long and disturbing history of marketing its products to appeal to young people,” Lincoln said. “While tobacco companies claim they do not target our children, their advertisements—such as a Camel ad that includes the words ‘Back to School Specials’ written on a chalkboard—tell us otherwise.
Tobacco companies know that almost all new smokers begin as kids, so they carefully design their products—through advertising, brightly colored packaging, and fruity flavors and other chemical additives to appeal to kids’ tastes—in order to make them more attractive to young people. Targeting our children like this is unacceptable.”
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the legal authority it needs to reduce youth smoking by preventing tobacco advertising that targets children, to prevent the sale of tobacco products to minors, to ban the addition of flavor additives that are inappropriately targeted to minors or ingredients that could be hazardous, and to prevent the tobacco industry from misleading the public about the dangers of smoking.
“More than 20 percent of high school students in Arkansas smoke, and more than 18 percent of Arkansas’s high school boys use smokeless tobacco,” Lincoln said. “Each year, a staggering 13,100 Arkansas kids try cigarettes for the first time, and another 3,900 additional kids become new daily smokers. For the health of our children and our nation, we must do more to protect young people from tobacco products.”
Source: Allamericanpatriots
