"We must lift the veil of secrecy on the tobacco industry so that all Americans understand that there is an epidemic of teen smoking, and how it came about," Clinton said at a Friday morning meeting in Washington, D.C.

A huge number of internal tobacco company documents was released to the public earlier this year because of a mounting number of state and individual lawsuits against the tobacco industry. The original release of the documents was done by the tobacco companies on the Internet; many have found it extremely difficult to search the location and download documents. Clinton's executive memorandum directs U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala to provide a plan for indexing the documents and making them easily available for dissemination to the public through the Internet and other means.

This plan keeps the pressure on the tobacco companies to stop selling, marketing and advertising their products to children. The Society is greatly encouraged by this plan, and glad to see the President continuing his leadership on tobacco control. We will continue our efforts to move national tobacco control legislation back onto Congress' agenda. With this move, the President has made it much easier for the American Cancer Society and others in the public health community to stop one of the most easily preventable causes of death and disease, especially when it comes to our kids.

Steve Rosa
Corporate Communications
American Cancer Society
202-661-5710
srosa@cancer.org