free laws. over the last three years we've also made great strides in our fight against tobacco and our efforts are paying off. but today's report is an important reminder that we have a lot more work to do to make tobacco death and disease a part of our past and not a part of our future. >> hhs secretary kathleen sebelius speaking last week. and we're live now for remarks from secretary sebelius at the museum here in washington. she is here with the u.s. surgeon general and the director for the september ecenters for control. the new tobacco education ad is called tips from former smokers campaign. it features people who are currently battling smoking-related illnesses. some of those people will be at this event this afternoon. this is live on c-span3. we expect it to get under way in just a moment.

. good afternoon, everyone. thank you for joining us to day. i'm delighted to have the chance to share this stage with two of

our great health leaders at health and human services, dr. regina benjamin, surgeon general and dr. tom freeden who heads the centers for disease control and i also want to personally thank the individuals who are here, some of whom you're going to h former smokers whose real life story inspires this effort and outreach. we're here today to announce the latest step this administration is taking in our fight against the number one cause of preventable death in america. we have a new ad campaign that we're launching today. it will feature the most moving and attention grabbing stories about smoking's devastating infects. these stories have never been seen in popular media. and we expect it will lead to more than a million -- more than half a million smokers seeking out the resources they need to

quit. we look back to the decades of smoking on airplanes and elevators, it can be easy to focus on how far we've come since then. it can be easy to be lulled into a sense of complaisancy and start to think that tobacco use is a problem that will go away on its own. but unfortunately, we know better. and the numbers actually tell a very different story. tobacco continues to kill 443,000 -- 443,000 americans every year. and for every person who dies from smoking, at least two new young smokers take their place. in total, across this country, we have 4,000 young americans under 18 smoking their first cigarette every day.

recruited by a tobacco industry that spends more than $10 billion a year to sell its products. so this ad campaign will tell the real story on how tobacco use can change your life. volunteers who volunteered to be in this campaign have lost lungs, legs, fingers, and the ability to speak as a result of smoking's toll. stories like these are familiar to millions of americans already suffering from tobacco-related illnesses and their families and friends. but we hope these ads based on the successful campaign in several states will be a wake up call for smokers and potential smokers who are not yet aware of the enormous damage they may be doing to their health. we have undertaken in the last three years to stop kids from starting to smoke and help the

70% of smokers who want to quit making that important leap. we enacted historic legislation that cracks down on the back door tactics tobacco companies use to market their products to kids and restricts the use of misleading terms like light and mild. the reforms were debated for years and now we're pleased to say they're the law of the land. we've also passed a health care law that is making it easier for people to get counseling to help them quit smoking. and we've made a key change so that medicare now covers the treatment before people get sick instead of forcing them to wait until symptoms start to show up. we're also supporting state based quit lines and backing proven local anti-tobacco efforts that can eventually become models for the rest of the country. and there are signs that the momentum is building around the

country. for the first time, we now have comprehensive smoke-free laws in more than half the states in the country. so as we pursue these efforts, we're also conscious of the enormous burden tobacco puts on our economy. almost $200 billion a year. any step we take to reduce tobacco use, even a small amount, is likely to have a huge payoff in reduced health care costs and higher productivity. in fact, we estimate that this campaign will save $170 million over the next three years. as last week's surgeon general's report made clear if, we want to accelerate falling tobacco rates, we need to take an all of the above approach. that reaches everyone from the 12-year-old thinking of testing his or her first puff to the 7 a-year-o -- 75-year-old lifetime smoker

and that's exactly what we've been doing. and this campaign is an important key addition to those fo us today for this important announcement. now i'd like to turn over the podium to surgeon general regina benjam benjamin. regina? [ applause ] >> good afternoon and a very special thank you to secretary sebelius for her exceptional lead eership in this critical issue. she has to leave for another commitment. she's really been very involved in this initiative from the beginning. you know, being here today is personal to me. as many of you, it's also personal to you. as i mentioned when i took this position, my mother died of lung cancer from smoking. when she was young, she started

smoking because she was a girl, she wasn't allowed to smoke like her twin brother was and she said as soon as she got to be old enough, she would. and she started smoking as a teenager. it took her life. and i then watched my uncle buddy, her twin brother, a world war ii prisoner of war survivor sit tide to an oxygen tank struggling for each breath because of smoking-related em fees e-maila until just a few months ago when his lungs just simply gave out. i don't want anyone else to have to suffer the loss of a loved one due to a preventable condition such as those caused by tobacco use. over the past two years, i've had the privilege of releasing two surgeon general's reports on tobacco. the first one, which has become known as the heart stopper report, because it says that -- it shows that one cigarette can can tauz a heart attack and the

science of how tobacco smoke damages almost every organ in your body. and in the second report was the one that was released just a week ago focused on youth and young adults. the stories you're going to hear today will convey the messages from those two surgeon generals report in very dramatic and very real ways. i want to tell you a little bit about the science and what is -- from the doctor's standpoint. you know, tobacco smoke is a toxic mix of more than 7,000 chemicals and compounds. inhaling the chemicals in tobacco smoke causes immediate and long-term damage which can lead to disease and to death. damage from tobacco smoke is immediate. the chemicals in tobacco smoke reach your lungs very quickly every time you inhale. your blood then carries the toxins to every organ in your body. exposure to tobacco smoke

quickly damages the blood vessels throughout the body making the blood more likely to clot. the chemicals in the tobacco smoke damages the delicate linings of the lungs and causes premature and permanent damage that reduces the ability of the lungs to exhale air efficiently and leads to what we call copd or chronic obstructive lung disease which includes emphysema. many americans don't know they have this disease and they haven't been experiencing stomgz. but people with heart disease are at risk from secondhand smoke exposure. even a brief exposure to tobacco smoke leads to changes in the blood vessel function and blood clotting which can trigger a heart attack. chemicals from tobacco smoke causes inflammation and cell damage and can also weaken your immune system. the chemicals and toxins in

tobacco smoke damages your dna which can lead to cancer. smoking can weaken your body's ability to fight cancer. also, smoking makes it harder for diabetics to regulate their blood sugar and that's why smokers with diabetes have a high risk of kidney disease and nerve damage rumenting in amputations and pure vision and even blindness. tobacco smoke is addicting. cigarettes are designed for addiction. nicotine is a key kmem call compound that causes the addicting effects of cigarettes. other ingredients and designed features make them even more attractive and more addictive than ever before. product design such as filter ventilation, flavoring agents and added chemical ingredients make nicotine easier to absorb and can deliver it more quickly into the brain. this increases addictive kick in

the pleasure that smokers feel. adolescents bodies are more sensitive to nicotine and adolescence are easily addicted than adults. this helps explain why every day 1,000 teenagers become smokers daily. as you heard, every day more than 1200 americans die from smoking. each one of those people who die are being replaced by two young smokers. in almost 90% of those replacement smokers smoke their first cigarette before they were age 18. fortunately, less people smoke today than in the past. with the whole lot of effort, our nation reduced tobacco use by half since the first surgeon general's report in 1964. however, since 2003, our progress has stalled. it has stayed the same since 2003. one in five adults in the united

states continue to smoke. and 3.6 million adolescents smoke. tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in the united states. but the good news is that we know what to do. if you or your loved one smokes, please quit. as a family physician i tell my patients which is now 300 million americans that quitting gives your body a chance to heal the damage caused by smoking. quitting at any age and at any time is beneficial. when smokers quit, the risk of a heart attack drops sharply after just one year. stroke risks can fall to about the same as nonsmokers after two to five years. and the risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and bladder are cut in half in five years. and the risk of dying from lung cancer drops about half in ten years. so it's never too late to quit. but the sooner you do, the

better. as a nation, we know what works. when we increase the price of tobacco, smoking rates decline. when we enact smoke free policies and reduce exposure to secondhand smoke, prompt smokers to quit, change the social norms, support healthy decisions and reduce heart attacks. and whether we educate the public with aggressive media campaigns, we inform them of the risk and encourage tobacco users to quit and prevent youth from starting. so today we're going to do just that, educate the public with an aggressive media campaign. so now i'm going to ask dr. tom freeden, the director of the centers for disease control and prevention to come and tell us about the cdc's tip from smokers campaign. dr. freeden?

>> thank you very much, surgeon general benjamin. thanks also to the department of health and human services and secretary kathleen sebelius who has been real leaders effectively pushing tobacco control on to the agenda and moving us forward through the fda and through many other means to reduce tobacco use in the u.s. i'm here as the director of the centers for disease control and prevention, the nation's prevention agency. i'm also here as a doctor. and when i think about smoking, i think of the patients i have cared for with emphysema zgaspig for every breath, the patiented i cared for that didn't live to see their children graduate from high school, college. the patients i cared for who have had strokes or heart attacks and have been unable to go back to the lives they were previously leading and the people who developed cancer and died from it or had to go through painful and difficult

treatment. that's the real story of smoking. and that's why we're at the museum because this is the reality. this is the news. this is what smoking brings to people's lives. nearly 90% of smokers begin smoking at a young age when they're under the age of 18. and smokers may commonly think that they're just going to die a few years younger. and while it's true that smokers die younger, it's also true that they live sicker. big tobacco has spent more than $100 billion on marketing and promotion in recent years to convey that healthy image that secretary sebelius spoke of. but now thanks to these courageous ex-smokers, we can bring the realities of smoking to smokers and nonsmokers across the country. the ads that you'll be seeing

later are not easy to watch. as physicians, it's not easy to care for patients dealing with very difficult medical conditions. as individuals, it's even harder to live with these conditions day in and day out. and, yet, the smokers who have come forward to tell their stories are living vibrant, healthy, affirming lives and helping other smokers to quit. ads like these work. research by the institute for of merchandise and national cancer institute, community guide, congre cochran initiative are unanimous. hard hitting ads convince smokers to quit and reduce the likelihood that kids will start smoking. i will confess that about eight years ago when i was running the health department, i wasn't convinced that ads like this worked. so we decided to do essentially a test and we ran hard hitting

ads for one year and systemically monitored the impact and the impact was dramatic. we saw a substantial decline in smoking, especially in the communities with the highest rates of advertising were -- the models, people who came forward, wherever we showed the ads the most, people stopped smoking in the greatest numbers. it was a dose response relationship. now the fact is that the troeb indust tobacco industry continues to do marketing and they have spent more on january 1st and 2nd of this year than the cdc will spend in the entire year on this campaign. so this is going up against great odds. but i am very confident that we will prevail because the truth does prevail. and the truth is what these

ex-smokers are showing to america. ads only work if they're done right and the evidence is clear that hard hard-hitting ads work. these will pay for themselves in reduced medical costs in just a few years, we think. but even more importantly, it will help 50,000 smokers to quit, we project, and save thousands of lives. these are inspiring, courageous people, many here today who are willing to share their stories. so, i'd like to have the honor of introducing three of the former smokers who will come up one by one to tell us their stories. first is brandon carmichael from north dakota. brandon is 31 years old. he has buerger's disease. he was diagnosed at age 18. and while the amputations he has undergone from buerger's disease are very specific to buerger's disease, amputations from

smoking are very common in a wide range of people. second, roosevelt smith from virginia, age 51, who's had a heart attack and heart surgery. he was 45 when he was diagnosed. and third, terrie hall from north carolina, who is 45, has had neck cancer, diagnosed at age 40. we will hear presentations from these three individuals and then i believe we'll show all of the ads. so, first, brandon?applause ] >> thank you again for inviting me to speak here today. i am brandon from north dakota. i started smoking when i was 15 years old. peer pressure drove me to pick up that first cigarette.

just three years later at the age of 18, i was diagnosed with buerger's disease, a disease that affects young or middle-aged smokers between the ages of 20 and 40. it causes inflammation, clotting of your arteries and veins, resulting in reduced circulation. because of that diagnosis, i suffered extreme pain, multiple sores and even gangrene. by the time i was 19, i had lost my left leg, i had lost my right leg at the age of 23, and because of my poor circulation, both my index fingers are now shorter than the rest of my fingers. off and on throughout this ordeal, i continued to smoke. and at the saage of 27, i was finally able to quit. the use of nicotine replacement therapies helped me in this process, but a home health care nurse gave me the willpower and the strength to finally quit successfully. that nurse is now my wife. not everyone will have the guardian angel that i consider my wife to be in helping me

through this process. for those people still struggling to quit, i urge you to get the help that's available. there are tools and resources out there that can help. if there is anything else to learn from my story, it's that smoking has consequences you may not even be aware of. you just don't know what that consequence of that next cigarette will be. thank you. [ applause ] >> roosevelt smith? >> hello. i'm roosevelt from virginia today. i became a daily smoker at 17 when i enlisted in the navy for the next 28 years, i was a

pack-a-day smoker. i've had five heart attacks, received two stints and had one open-heart surgery where they performed six different bypasses. despite all this, i still continued to smoke. the addiction is that strong. i lost my ability to work my trade as a commercial plumber. i could no longer perform the tasks that was needed. not being able to work created a financial hardship for my family and myself. something that impacts me to this day. i have five children. after my heart attacks, i could no longer physically, do physical activities with my children. three years ago, i finally quit. my heart physically hurt from the years of smoking, but my move came from the heart.

i did not want to inflict further pain on my family. i wanted to do all i could do to ensure that i would be around for my children to grow up. do not think that cigarettes can't hurt you. they will. if you want to quit, your family and friends will be glad to help you. your loved ones will thank you, as i know mine did. thank you. [ applause ] >> terrie hall from north carolina. >> good afternoon. i'm terrie from north carolina. i want to thank you for allowing me to tell my story. i started smoking at the age of

17. i had smoked for 23 years. at the peak of my addiction, i was up to two packs a day. at the age of 40, i was diagnosed with larynx cancer, and now i have a hole in my neck. i've had cancer 11 times, 7 since my larynx surgery. in 2001. you know, you think this only happens to other people. well, i'm the other people. when i was growing up, there was no tobacco education in north carolina, a tobacco state. when i see what the cdc is doing today, through this campaign, it's moving us into a positive

direction. i'm grateful for the opportunity to share my story. hopefully, that will keep others from making the choice that has so impacted my health and my life. thank you. >> thank you so much. [ applause ] >> the amputation that i had -- >> buerger's disease is a vascular disease brought on by smoking. >> my fingers started to go piece by piece. >> first, it was my left leg. after my left leg, it was my right leg. and so, now i'm a double amputee, all from smoking. >> my tip to everyone is, don't believe that this can't happen to you, because it can. >> you can quit. for free help, call 1-800-quit-now. >> my name is roosevelt. i always thought that cigarette smoking just messed up your lungs. i never thought that at only 45, it would give me a heart attack.

i never thought it would stop me from playing basketball with my kids. i never thought it would give me a scar like this. and i never thought that it would change my life forever. my tip is, do your heart a favor and quit now. >> you can quit. for free help, visit smokefree.gov. >> i'm terrie. i want to give you some tips about getting ready in the morning. first your teeth, then your wig, then your hands-free device. and now you're ready for the day. >> you can quit. for free help, call 1-800-quit-now. >> it began with my big toe. that was my first amputation that i had. >> buerger's disease, it's a vascular disease brought on by

smoking. >> my fingers started to go piece by piece. >> first, it was my left leg. after my left leg, it was my right leg. and so, now i'm a double amputee, all from smoking. >> my tip to everyone is, don't believe that this can't happen to you, because it can. >> you can quit. for free help, call 1-800-quit-now. >> my name is roosevelt. i always thought that cigarette smoking just messed up your lungs. i never thought that at only 45, it would give me a heart attack. i never thought that it would stop me from playing basketball with my kids. i never thought that it would give me a scar like this. and i never thought that it would change my life forever. my tip is, do your heart a favor and quit now.