Majority Statement

• Frank R. Lautenberg

  Senator
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  Majority Statement

  Frank R. Lautenberg

  Today’s hearing is part of our oversight of the Federal Trade Commission.  We are going to look closely at the FTC’s role in the regulation of cigarette marketing.

   

  We will focus on the test that the FTC has permitted tobacco companies to use for decades to measure the tar and nicotine levels of its cigarettes.

   

  Smokers have long relied on these tar and nicotine ratings to determine which cigarettes to smoke.  For example, cigarettes with a low tar FTC rating are marketed as ‘light’ cigarettes.

   

  As we will learn from today’s hearing, smokers believe that when they switch to a ‘light’ cigarette, they are turning to a safer alternative than a regular cigarette.

   

  But the National Cancer Institute and other studies show that switching to a ‘light’ cigarette may not only be as bad as a regular cigarette, but often, it is worse for your health.

   

  Let me repeat that: a ‘light’ cigarette can often be more deadly than a regular cigarette.

   

  And addicted smokers are the victims of this deception.

   

  I used to be a smoker.  Fortunately, my ten-year old daughter convinced me to stop.

   One day, when I was smoking at home, she said, ‘Daddy, they told me at school that if you smoke, they will put a black box in your throat.  I love you and I don’t want you to get a black box in your throat.’

   

  That’s when I quit and I haven’t smoked since.

   

  I know it is not easy to give it up.  The reality is that most smokers are addicted to a drug – a drug called nicotine.

   

  As we will learn in this hearing, it is the effect of nicotine on the brain that renders the FTC rating method inaccurate.

   

  The FTC employs the use of what some have called the “smoking robot” machine.  Thanks to the Centers for Disease Control, we have short video which I would like to show now, that demonstrates the FTC Method and the smoking robot.

   

  Unlike this ‘smoking robot,’ the reality is that smokers do not smoke cigarettes like a machine.  Rather, our brains manipulate puffing patterns to make sure the smoker takes in enough nicotine from every cigarette to sooth their addiction.

   

  That is why many who switch from Marlboros to Marlboro Lights wind up getting more tar – because they are taking longer and deeper puffs to bring in the same amount of nicotine they get from a standard Marlboro cigarette.

   

  Even the FTC has acknowledged that its testing method does not work.

   

  In fact, in May 2000, the FTC put out a ‘Consumer Alert,’ about their tar and nicotine ratings, which said, ‘Don't count on the numbers’ and ‘cigarette tar and nicotine ratings can’t predict the amount of tar and nicotine you get.’

   

  So the FTC was saying essentially: ‘Don’t pay attention to our own system.’

   

  The FTC should not allow this rating system to continue if it cannot stand behind it.

   

  And Big Tobacco should not be able to hide behind the FTC method to justify the claim that ‘light’ and ‘low-tar’ cigarettes and healthier.

   

  In 2005, in this Committee, I tried to fix this problem.  I brought an amendment to prohibit the tobacco companies from continuing to use the FTC method to justify health claims about their cigarettes.

   

  My amendment lost on a party-line vote.

   

  I am hopeful that in the wake of this hearing today, we can build momentum to finally tackle this problem.

   

  The issue of tobacco control is a critical issue for our nation.  Tobacco-related illnesses rob more than 400,000 Americans of their lives every year.  And tobacco creates $89 billion in annual health care costs.

   

  Just last week, the Centers for Disease Control reported that recent declines in smoking have stopped.  This is a disturbing development for America’s public health.

   

  As many know, I have a long history of trying to write sensible laws to help control the damage caused by tobacco use.

   

  I wrote the law that banned smoking on airplanes in 1987.  That law has changed our nation’s cultural attitudes about secondhand smoke and helped usher in the smoke-free revolution we are now seeing across the country.

   

  I am proud that my home state of New Jersey recently passed a state-wide law banning smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces.

   

  I also wrote a law in 1989 that requires that all buildings that house federally-funded programs for children maintain a smoke-free environment.

   

  Now we have another urgent tobacco problem to fix.

   

  I look forward to hearing the testimony from our witnesses today.

Minority Statement

• Ted Stevens

  Senator
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  Minority Statement

  Ted Stevens

  Mr. Chairman, I do thank you for holding today’s hearing.  I think there is a lot that remains to be done in this area. The FTC has been using the same rating system to measure tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide yields for 40 years, so I am told, yet cigarette design has not remained the same during this time period.  There are concerns that consumers are being misled by the cigarette rating system that is currently in use as it relates to light and low tar cigarettes. 

  The test machine was not intended to imitate human smokers, yet that is how consumers are interpreting the test results.  I look forward to hearing the witnesses today and I am pleased you have held this hearing Mr. Chairman.

   

   

  Q&A

   

  Honorable Kovacic: This is something I can clarify for you afterwards.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  Who posses them?

   

  Honorable Kovacic: The testing is done by a trade association that does the test; we subpoena on a regular basis the data and post it on our website.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  Are you prohibited from testing?

   

  Honorable Kovacic: We are not Senator, we abandoned are own testing, we used to have variants of these elegant machines on the top floor of our building, until the mid 1980’s where the cost of maintaining them became relatively high and we began to realize the limitations of our own expertise to do this work.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  Dr. Backinger, does NCI have any testing machines?

   

  Dr. Backinger: No we do not.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  Dr. Ashley, do you have any testing machines?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  Yes sir, we do.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  Where did you get them?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  We purchased them as part of our program looking at the impact of the design of cigarettes on emissions…

   

  Sen. Stevens:  That’s not the questions, where did you get them?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  We purchased them from manufacturers who make the machines.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  They make them for the same testing organizations that’s not federal?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  They make them for whatever consumer would purchase them.  They are purchased largely by the tobacco industry.  We got our tobacco smoking machine from the same companies that make them for the industry.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  It’s the same ones that Mr. Kovacic is talking about right?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  Yes sir.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  Have any of you ever asked Congress for money to produce your own machines? 

   

  Dr. Ashley:  If I can try to clarify something, the machine itself…

   

  Sen. Stevens:  I really have a shortage of time doctor.  Just, would you please answer my question?  Has anyone in your agencies ever asked Congress to give you money to replicate those machines, to make build better machines?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  No sir.

   

  Sen. Stevens:  How long are these machines going to be?  Dr. Kovacic, when were they made?

   

  Honorable Kovacic: I believe in the 1960’s, the original design.

   

  Sen. Stevens: The even predates my presence in the Congress.  That’s pretty old.  I just don’t understand.  Tell me this, I’m shifting over now, have you done a study on increasing taxes on cigarettes and how it’s affecting consumers?   Any of you? 

   

  Dr. Backinger: The NCI has supported research through extramural funding to look at the increase of price on price of cigarettes on consumption and prevalence and we actually, one of our monographs addresses that.  I don’t have that information with me specifically today, but research does show as you increase the price of cigarettes, it both affects youth smoking and adult smoking. 

   

  Sen. Stevens: Did that cover the question of bootlegging cigarettes as a result of increased taxes? 

   

  Dr. Backinger: I don’t know that off the top of my head.  I would need to check back with that and get back to you on the record.  

   

  Sen. Stevens: Do any of your agencies have jurisdiction over pursuing those who bootleg cigarettes, who sell them, notwithstanding a federal loss?

   

  Honorable Kovacic: We generally wouldn’t Senator, no.  We could prosecute people who misrepresent the source of the cigarette, who advertise cigarettes coming from one source, but receive them from another.  But the actual policing of bootlegging, counterfeiting, that’s beyond our authority.

   

  Sen. Stevens: It’s up to the state because it’s basically their taxes, is that right?

   

  Honorable Kovacic: Or I would assume Senator, Customs and Border Patrol that deal with cross border movement.  

   

  Sen. Stevens: Did you start to say something Dr. Ashley?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  There is a federal agency that deals with that, it’s not CDC. 

   

  Sen. Stevens: Just one last question.  As part of our Congressional involvement, we did require at the cigarette manufacturers to do a certain amount of advertising.  I’ve seen some recently, as matter of fact, on television and radio and I think even in the printed media about trying to direct at young people, at children and trying to prevent them to start smoking.  Have any of you studied the results of those advertisements we required?

   

  Dr. Backinger: The National Cancer Institute did fund one study in that arena, which was published in the December 2006 American Journal of Public Health and I could provide that article for you and for the record.  Just off the top of my head, the research found that youth that saw those ads on tv did not help prevent smoking initiation.  

   

  Sen. Stevens: Since that basic settlement we were all part of, has there been an increase or decrease in cigarette smoking in young people?

   

  Dr. Backinger: For the latest years that are available, and I would have to look at that again, youth smoking has increased slightly in the last two years for which we have data, slightly.

   

  Sen. Stevens: Last irrelevant question, but my colleague has mentioned the fact we were all given so many free cigarettes.  My friends and I were never seduced by those cigarettes, didn’t smoke cigarettes, we smoked pipes.  Have you ever made any studies of pipes and its connection to cancer?

   

  Dr. Ashley:  We have not studied pipes. 

   

  Sen. Stevens: Dr. Backinger?

   

  Dr. Backinger: I am not aware of any NCI funded research on pipes specifically, but I could check.

   

  Sen. Stevens: Well, I’d be interested.  I quit a long time ago anyway, but I just wondered if there was any connection between pipe smoking, as well as the cigarette smoking.  What about cigars?  Have you done studies of cigars?

   

  Dr. Backinger: NCI did look at cigars and during the 90’s when there was an increase and prevalence of smoking of cigars and we do have a NCI monograph on that subject.  Just the other comment, however, is all tobacco, regardless of its form is hazardous and causes a variety of cancers as well as other diseases. 

   

  Sen. Stevens: Did your monograph compare the basic results of smoking different types of substances, like pipes, tobacco, or cigarettes?

   

  Dr. Backinger: the cigar monograph was focused solely on the various types of cigars that were available at the time.  

   

  Sen. Stevens: Well, I thank you very much. I thank you for your testimony.  I’m a little disturbed.  This is the first time I’ve heard about those machines, not that our government testing was not done by the machines that the industry developed.  Thank you.

Testimony

• The Honorable William E. Kovacic

  Commissioner

  Federal Trade Commission
  Download Testimony (56.62 KB)

• Dr. Cathy Backinger

  Acting Chief, Tobacco Control Research Branch

  National Cancer Institute
  Download Testimony (84.77 KB)

• Dr. David L. Ashley

  Chief of Emergency Response and Air Toxicants, Branch for the Division of Laboratory Sciences

  National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  Download Testimony (45.90 KB)

Witness Panel 2

• Dr. Jonathan M. Samet

  Professor and Chairman, Department of Epidemiology

  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
  Download Testimony (121.95 KB)

• Dr. Jack Henningfield

  Professor, Adjunct, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

  Vice President, Research and Health Policy, Pinney Associates
  Download Testimony (66.24 KB)

• Dr. Marvin Goldberg

  Bard Professor of Marketing, Smeal College of Business

  Penn State University
  Download Testimony (76.13 KB)

• Mr. Stephen Sheller

  Founder and Managing Partner

  Sheller, P.C.
  Download Testimony (145.54 KB)