Gov. Gregoire celebrates 10th anniversary of landmark tobacco settlement

November 24, 2008

AS WRITTEN

Good morning, and thank you for the introduction.

Or should I say Stank You!

I really like those �No Stank You Ads.�

Those ads are right! Tobacco not only kills � it literally stinks!!

I like the ads. But the really important thing is � do you young people like them?

Do you?

(Wait for the response. If you don�t get a good response, ask them if they�re already pass�. Have a brief little give and take. Maybe throw somebody a T-Shirt, which are being shared as prizes at the event.)

Why do I care if you like anti-smoking ads?

Because we know for a fact that the best people to convince young people not to become addicted to one of the world�s worst health scourges are you -- other young people.

I know this might come as a total shock to the other adults here today, but kids have a way of not listening to adults � even to a 61-year-old governor.

But you do listen to each other.

When I was in middle-school and high school in Auburn, I never saw any point in acquiring the tobacco habit. And I could see then it would actually take work to learn how to smoke or chew without getting sick to your stomach. Yuck!

But I saw other kids doing it, and today I look back and wish I had tried to persuade them not to. I wonder how many of them are already dead after a lifetime of an expensive habit. It makes me sad.

Well, you young people are now in the position I was in. If each of you never takes up smoking or smokeless tobacco -- and if each of you persuades just one other kid not to � that would make a big difference!

It�s up to you.

As for me -- As an adult, as governor, and as the former Attorney General of Washington -- I�ve tried to make up for my failure to do more as a kid to fight tobacco.

And that�s one of the reasons we�re all here today � to celebrate what I and a whole lot of other attorneys general across the country pulled off 10 years ago to break the grip of big tobacco on kids.

What we did has a boring name � The Master Settlement Agreement.

But what it boils down to is we took the Tobacco Giants to court and got to them to pay the states billions and billions of dollars � which we now use for health care and anti-smoking campaigns like the No Stank You ads.

Not only that, but we got them to stop using tobacco ads aimed at kids � like the cartoon Joe Camel. For Washington State in particular � we got extra money because of my leadership role in the settlement.

And we�re using that money for what we call our Life Sciences Discovery Fund where researchers in our state are looking for cures to terrible diseases and for ways to improve animal health.

We know our war on Big Tobacco is working. Here in Washington, smoking among young people is down by 50 percent, and for adults, it�s down 25 percent.

But we have a lot more work to do � all of us together.

One of my greatest dreams is that someday nobody will be using tobacco. This terrible, destructive substance will be a thing of the past on this planet.

And it will be the next generation that will make it happen.

It will be up to all of you.

Thank You