I want to speak in strong support for this amendment. I hope it would get unanimous support by all members of this committee. If there's anything we can agree on, it's that we should be doing everything we can to prevent the marketing to children, the attraction, or taking up of tobacco products by children. If we're going to err on any side, I would much rather err on the side of doing everything we can to make sure products are not marketed that could be appealing to children.
I would point out one thing. The history of the tobacco industry over the last decades has been one of unbelievable marketing expertise as they get incredibly sophisticated in terms of how they try to make these products attractive to people.
I must also say for the record that it has been a documented history through litigation that the tobacco industry has a documented history of suppressing important information about their products that are damaging, about the health impact of their products. For years, they suppressed evidence linking cardiopulmonary disease and cancer about their products from the population and customers they sold to. Then they started marketing products under misleading terms like “lights“ or “milds“ when they knew that those products really had no corresponding lack of damage to their customer base.
There was just a recent court decision in Quebec ordering damages of I think $15 billion against tobacco companies for similar kinds of misfeasance.
I think in this bill here we should all be supporting any measure that seeks to close every door possible to tobacco companies trying to make their products attractive to anybody—but most importantly, to children and young people.