Tobacco Documents Online

TESTIMONY OF REP. JANE HARMAN HOUSE WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE NOVEMBER 18, 1993 My testimony is autobiographicai. It concerns my relationship with my mother, my earliest fan and a major influence in my life. The last time I saw my mother was August of this year. Her lung cancer and emphysema were advanced. She had lost most of her eyesight, her hair, her sense of balance, and was substantially disoriented. Yet, as always, she held a lighted cigarette in her hand. She died two weeks later. How typical is her story? I'm not sure. But she grew up in an immigrant family in New York -- a family of modest means. She started smoking in high school at 15. She told me that when she first inhaled it hurt. But she forgot the discomfort because it was cool to smoke. And it became a major addiction: All the early photos of her show her with a cigarette in her hand. She was rarely without one. Usually she smoked three packs a day, and the house I grew up in reeked of cigarette smoke. My father, a meaical doctor, is now down to an occasional cigarette, but he smoked too. No one spoke of health risks though my brother and I knew it was a habit we would never adopt. When the health risks were known and especially after my mother's cancer was diagnosed, her addiction seemed to increase. Shortly before she died, my brother asked her why she smoked. Gasping for air, she responded, "My dear, I've enjoyed every cigarette." If my mother had grown up today in California - with its cigarette excise tax dedicated to smoking prevention - the studies tell us she would be less likely to take uo smoking than when she was young. And if my mother were to have grown up in today's Canada, where the cigarette taxes are more than $3 per pack and Canadian teenage smoking has fallen by more than 60% from a decade ago, criances are very good that she would never take up smoking. My youngest children are 9 and 11. 1 want them and mi;:;ons of other American children not to take up smoking when they are 13, 14, 15. Without smoking, the epidemiologists tell me, my mother would likely have lived another 8 years. QD This Committee has already heard a litany of statistics about the dangers of ~ cigarette smoking today. I will just tell you that today and every day, three peoole in o each of our districts will die from cigarette smoking just as my mother did. J OD Despite all the rhetoric of the past week, NAFTA was not a moral issue. This is.