Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 108 Part 6.djvu/985

 -;"•;» •"^S^s^-t: PROCLAMATION 6664—APR. 7, 1994 108 STAT. 5553 cinogens, air pollution, drinking water contaminants, and electromagnetic radiation. We now know that every one of us can join the fight against cancer. The role played by the public is just as important as the role played by the most highly trained scientists. Each of us can adopt a lifestyle that lowers our chances of getting cancer. In cancer control, nothing is more important than understanding and striving to reduce the effects of smoking, implicated in at least onethird of all cancer deaths each year. Some 50 million Americans smoke—most are adults, but a significant number are teenagers. Smokers bear the brunt of our annual national tragedy of more than 200,000 cases of lung and mouth cancers and more than 100,000 cases of pancreatic, kidney, and bladder cancers. No new drug—no new prevention or screening technique—would strike as powerful a blow in our fight against cancer as the single decision by millions of smokers to quit their habit once and for all. Thanks to our progress in cancer research, more than one-half of the people diagnosed with cancer survive their disease 5 years or more. Such survival rates were not even a whispered hope for cancer patients just one generation ago. The years ahead hold promise of important advances in the prevention and treatment of cancer. Together we will continue to work so that fewer people will have to suffer from cancer and its aftermath, so that fewer lives will be jeopardized, and so that fewer people will lose their loved ones to this disease. In 1938, the Congress passed a joint resolution (52 Stat. 148; 36 U.S.C. 150) requesting the President to issue an annual proclamation declaring April as "Cancer Control Month." NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim April 1994 as Cancer Control Month. I invite the Governors of the 50 States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Mayor of the District of Columbia, and the appropriate officials of all other areas under the American flag, to issue similar proclamations. I also ask health care professionals, private industry, advocacy groups, community groups, insurance companies, and all other interested organizations and individual citizens to unite during this month to publicly reaffirm our Nation's continuing commitment to controlling cancer. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eighteenth. . WILLIAM J. CLINTON

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