ASH HONORED AT WHITE HOUSE CEREMONY

On Wednesday, March 20th, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) was honored at the White House in a ceremony which included President Bill Clinton, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, and many of the leaders in the war on smoking.

President Clinton received the first annual Mike Synar award for his efforts to prevent teens from becoming hooked.

ASH was one of the few organizations specially recognized in the ceremony, and ASH Executive Director John Banzhaf was asked to stand and be recognized for his achievements.

The President spoke about "what was once the work of a few lonely activists [which now] has grown into a national movement to protect the health and the future of our children."

These words surely include ASH, since it is one of the very few organizations which has been active and effective in the war on smoking for almost 30 years.

Below are excerpts from the opening remarks by HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, and then excerpts from the address by President Bill Clinton.

The ASH program described below was funded by a generous grant from the James Hervey Johnson Charitable Educational Trust.

DONNA SHALALA:

Good afternoon. Mr. President, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, I'm honored to welcome all of you here today. Never before has a president joined with such an impressive group of advocates in the fight to keep tobacco away from our children.

Tobacco is the number one cause of preventable death in this country. Eighty percent of all adult smokers light up that first cigarette before their 18th birthday. We're not talking about an innocent habit; we're talking about a pediatric disease that must be stopped.

Our goal is to reduce smoking among children and adolescents by 50% within seven years. To do that, the president has proposed some of the boldest public health proposals this country has ever seen, proposals that put power back into parents' hands, where it belongs.

But as you well know, government can't meet this challenge alone, and we shouldn't ever try. And that's why this event is so important. Stopping tobacco use by children is going to take all of us working together, community by community, block by block, parent by parent, child by child.

It's also going to take the energy of the 35,000 children who, with the help from Action on Smoking and Health, wrote letters to the President about his tobacco proposals. These 35,000 letters, which are now a part of the FDA record, represent the largest filing in American history ever made by children.

Three of them are here today and I'd like to ask them and ASH's director, Professor John Banzhaf, to stand. (Applause.)

Quite simply, it's going to take very one of us, working together and using the power of our love for young people, to protect this and every generation from a lifetime of addiction. And we will do it -- in the name of Mike Synar, with the leadership of President Clinton, for the future of our children.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON:

When I gave the State of the Union address and spoke about the challenges facing our country as we move into the next century, I said, and I repeat, that our first challenge -- not the government, the people's first challenge -- is to strengthen our families and cherish all our children and give every single one of our young people the childhood that he or she deserves.

One of the most important things we can do in meeting that challenge is to protect our children from what is rapidly becoming the single greatest threat to their health, cigarette smoking and tobacco addiction. This is, like other challenges, as Secretary Shalala so eloquently said, a challenge we have to meet together.

I thank the parents of America who have become increasingly sensitive to this issue and are working hard to teach their children. I thank the young people here who are working hard to reach out to their peers, and who often can have more influence on their peers than their parents or the president. I thank the athletes and the entertainers who are committed to being role models, the businesses who control access to tobacco products, the teachers, the coaching, the advertising executives. I thank the health care professionals and the volunteers.

Because of this great sea of people in America, what was once the work of a few lonely activists has grown into a national movement to protect the health and the future of our children.

We have, as all of you know, proposed ways to crack down on advertising that tells young people smoking is cool. We've proposed ways to make it harder for children and teenagers to buy cigarettes by reducing their access to vending machines and free samples.

We issued the Synar regulation in January to demand that states, in return for the federal money they received, do more to enforce their own laws against the sale of tobacco to minors. It's worth noting here that is illegal in every single state of the Union to sell any form of tobacco to minors. We're working closely with state governments to ensure that the Synar regulations are implemented quickly and decisively. And I have to say that so far, the results on that front have been quite encouraging to me.

I want to thank all the activists who are here in the room who have been recognized and those of you who have not. And especially I'd like to say a word of thanks to the former employees of tobacco companies who have stood up to tell the world the truth.

My friends, we have come a long way in this endeavor -- indeed, a long way since our administration made the first announcement about our efforts to reduce tobacco advertising and tobacco sales to young people. Now, we have supermarket chains, athletes, workers, private citizens who have recognized the threat tobacco poses. And this movement is producing results.

Just last week there was a major breakthrough when Liggett agreed to settle its lawsuits. It became the very first tobacco company to acknowledge that tobacco can be deadly. This is the first crack in the stone wall of denial.

My message to other tobacco companies is, therefore, simple and direct: Take responsibility. Sell to adults, but draw the line on children.

I'm happy that Liggett has also agreed to begin changing their own advertising practices so that they have less influence over young people. That's a good start. Now I want them and the other tobacco companies to go the distance. If selling cigarettes to minors is illegal, no good corporate citizen should be aiming advertising at those minors. (Applause.)

My fellow Americans, we can win this fight. We can save countless lives of our young people. We can give them the future that we imagine when we look into the bright faces of these children who are here. But we have to do it together. It is folly to pretend that any one of us, including the president, can do it alone.

Thank you, and God bless you all.

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