• President Clinton's initiative to reduce tobacco use by children is the result of an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration into industry practices and an extensive review of successful measures in preventing children from using tobacco products. After the proposed rule was published on August 11, 1995, the public was invited to comment until January 2, 1996. The Agency received more than 95,000 different comments, totaling more than 700,000 pieces of mail. The subsequent review and analysis of those comments, as well as the Agency's initial work, provide a solid base for the FDA's measures to reduce access and limit appeal of tobacco products for children.

  Today, an estimated 4.5 million children and adolescents smoke in the United States, and another 1 million use smokeless tobacco. Each year, another 1 million young people join the ranks of regular smokers, and nearly one out of every three young people who smoke will have their lives shortened from the terrible diseases caused by smoking.

  This public health crisis is worsening. Children are starting to smoke at younger and younger ages: Today, the average teenage smoker begins to smoke at 14 1/2 years old and becomes a daily smoker before age 18. And those children soon regret this loss of freedom. The Gallup Poll in 1992 found that 70 percent of smokers between the ages of 12 and 17 regret beginning to smoke and 66 percent want to quit.

Children at Risk

Children are becoming addicted to nicotine. More than 80 percent of all adult smokers had tried smoking by their 18th birthday and more than half of them had already become regular smokers by that age. Although only 5 percent of daily smokers surveyed in high school said they would definitely be smoking five years later, close to 75 percent were smoking 7 to 9 years later. Of the almost 3,000 young people who become regular smokers each day, nearly 1,000 of them will have their lives shortened from tobacco-related diseases.

Costs of Smoking Staggering

Health care costs associated with tobacco use are rising. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that in 1993 the health care costs associated with smoking totaled $50 billion: $26.9 billion for hospital costs; $15.5 billion for doctors; $4.9 billion in nursing home costs; $1.8 billion for prescription drugs, and $900 million for home-health care expenditures. The Office of Technology Assessment calculated the social costs attributable to smoking in 1990 at $68 billion. The calculation was based on $20.8 billion in direct health care costs and $6.9 billion in lost productivity from sickness and disabilities and $40.3 billion in lost productivity from premature deaths.

Benefits Outweigh Costs

Protecting the future health of our children provides a benefit that will continue to pay dividends for our society. The annual benefits from reduced disease caused by smoking are projected to be $28 to $43 billion. These benefits are achieved through annual net medical cost savings of $2.6 billion, annual morbidity-related productivity savings of $900 million, and annual benefits of reduced mortality of $24.6 to $39.7 billion. Under the final rule, manufacturers of tobacco products are projected to have one-time costs of $78 to $91 million and annual operating costs of $2 million. Retailers are projected to have one-time costs of $96 million and annual costs of $78 million, compared to the $45 billion to $50 billion spent annually on tobacco products at the retail level.

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