Tobacco Documents Online

354 Statement of Rep. Mi. Gene Snyder before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on the Consumer, February 10, 1972 Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to present a statement for this committee today. I come before you today with great concern. I am not only concerned for the people involved in the tobacco indus- try of Kentucky, but also for all of' the people of the United States. As I look over the punitive mea:suresthat have been taken against tobacco over the years, I fear that the main proposal of this new bill to reg,ulate the "tar"-nicotine content in cigarettes, may very well be just another step toward a back door to their total prohibition. In the past few years, the anti-smoking advocates have mounted a potentially disasterous propaganda campaign. A campaign which is designed to totally annihilate one of the oldest and most well established industries inthis country. About three million members of tobacco farm families ~ O earn their principal livelihood from the crop. They live ~ ~ in 22 states and earn more than 1.4 billion dollars yearly 4b C11 from the leaf. More than 100,000!workers are gainfully W employed'in tobacco manufacturingand collect an annual payroll of more than half-a-billion dollars. Fed'eral, state

-2- and local governments receive five billion dollars in taxes from the sale of tobacco products. In all, there are about 329 industries directly or indirectly involved in selling their products to the tobacco industry, ranging from cello- phane and advertising to transportation and'steel. Mr. Chairman, taking all into account this adds up to about eleven billion dollars. This cigarette controversy -- and make note that I employ the word controversy -- may very well be a microcosm of one of the principles formulated as a building block in the creation of this great nation of ours. And that principle simply is this: Shall we as a nation scrap the historical principle that anybody -- an industry as well as an individual -- is innocent until proven guilty? , . Shall we impose on~ the business community a cruel and unusual assumption of guilt and force it to prove its innocence of all charges, however irresponsible? If this new standard is imposed~on business then we can say good-bye to the economic system as we know it. And for the 170,000 Kentucky farm~families as well as the rest of the industry that would spell nothing but devastation. 355

I think that tobacco smoking must be the most widely- accused product on the consumer market. Tobacco has in one way or another been linked to more ailments than I care to even think about. Well, Mr. Chairman, it's more than high time that something be done to replace the malicious scare campaigns raging on against tobacco with objective facts. It's high time that the people of this industry not only speak up, but that they are also listened~to. The anti-smoking advocates have truly succumbed to their bwest point when one newspaper editorial recently referred to scientists who accept tobacco industry money for smoking-health research as "tobacco industry prosti- tutes." The tobacco industry, in the interest of scientific objectivity has given millions of'dollars toward an increased campaign to find the answers to the questions about smoking and health that remain unsolved. This money has gone to some of the most eminent scientists and researchers in the world -- and totally on a no-strings- attached basis. And I tell you Mr. Chairman that it is more than a social curse to refer to such respected scientists as "prostitutes."

-4- The Surgeon General of the United States has no real scientific case against tobacco. He is basing his case on statistical data that from a purely scientific point of view cannot be accepted as final truth. The truth must be made available, but it can only be obtained through dedicated scientific research. We are placing the lives of hundreds of thousands of growers and their families in jeopardy. Can we do this on the basis of statistics and emotional crusading? Over a hundred years ago, the English writer William Hazlitt put his finger on the problem. He said: "The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknow- ledge our own ignorance." A statistical crusade is no way to get at scientific truth, and I submit to you, Mr. Chairman, that the Ameri- can people deserve better. 357