329 



substance abuse too, alcohol and drugs, but cigarette smoking is 

 the number one cost culprit, there is no question about it. 



Mr. Waxman. Well, I think that is why we have got to stay, on 

 this subcommittee, focused on this issue and not in any way be dis- 

 tracted from our responsibility by ludicrous suggestions that read- 

 ing articles in the newspaper might well be something that we 

 shouldn't talk about in a very distorted kind of legal reasoning. 



Mr. Wyden. 



Mr. Wyden. Just one last question again in terms of the trends 

 you might see in the tobacco industry, Mr. Califano. 



There have been a number of stories in the press, most recently 

 again this weekend in the New York Times, about the tobacco in- 

 dustry's very aggressive efforts to promote these markets overseas, 

 particularly in Asia. I think that there was one report, it might 

 have been this weekend or another, that talked about millions and 

 millions of children, for example, in China, in effect, being targets 

 of this kind of smoking campaign. 



I wonder if what we are seeing here now is another part of this 

 historical pattern of the tobacco industry to buy time to cultivate 

 another market. It seems to me what you saw again yesterday is 

 try to silence everybody possible. The tobacco industry wants to 

 run the best censorship program that they can, and then buy them- 

 selves some additional time in order to get at these very lucrative 

 overseas markets, particularly in Asia. 



Is that a view that concerns you? Is that, again, part of this pat- 

 tern of, they are always trying to look at upcoming markets? 



Mr. Califano. Mr. Wyden, I am profoundly concerned about 

 that, not only because of what it says about these individuals, the 

 tobacco companies, in selling their products overseas, often without 

 any of the warnings that we have here, taking advantage of illit- 

 erate populations, taking advantage of poor people, and getting 

 them hooked on this drug, but I fear for what damage these compa- 

 nies will do to the country I love, the United States of America, be- 

 cause I was at an international conference in London this Feb- 

 ruary, and there were people from Malaysia, and Columbia, and 

 other parts of the Far East, and in the course of the conference, 

 this colonel, the number two military officer in Columbia, turned 

 to a couple of the Americans, and he said, "We are stopping the ex- 

 port of cocaine from our country. People are dying to stop cocaine 

 from going into the United States. You are pouring cigarettes into 

 our country. You are killing far more of our people and maiming 

 far more of our people than we ever had with this. What are you 

 going to do about it?" And I must say, as an American, I was em- 

 barrassed, as were the other Americans that were at that con- 

 ference. 



Mr. Wyden. As you know, communications, you know, are global, 

 and people in Asia are going to be getting the same facts as we 

 Americans are getting, so the truth is going to get out. I mean I 

 guess the tobacco companies can keep running, but they are never 

 going to be able to hide completely, and I just hope that we can 

 help discourage smoking among young people in our country and 

 also keep the tobacco companies from buying time to addict mil- 

 lions of other youngsters overseas and giving our country a bad 

 name in the process. 



