Nearing disaster in New York - please take action NOW to prevent e-cigarette ban.

[Kobudo]

They will work their full ban into a bill designed to prevent sale to minors, if you ask me. They'll make that the big point and anyone who doesn't go along with it will be outed for voting against a bill that was "for the children".

Sigh

I wish everyone in NY, and all of us, the same success that we had in Illinois.

If you haven't checked out the thread about the Illinois ban, check it out. Apparently when they were losing the comprehensive ban and deciding that maybe it should be re-worked into a ban for minors only, a member of the ALA stood up and said, and I'm paraphrasing slightly, "That's not the way WE wrote the bill."

It should be no surprise the ALA wants people to get lung cancer and die slowly from smoking analogs.When that happens, people who died of smoking-related illnesses, like my dad did, have funerals. Funerals are frequently a place where people are asked to make donations in memorial of the deceased. Furthermore, if cancer was somehow cured, their organization would cease to be relevant. There is money, however, in long-term "treatments."

We are up against grade-A scumbags here, and the travesty is most people, not to mention legislators, get warm fuzzy feelings when they think about doing things "for a good cause."

[MitchellBeans]

I live in upstate NY, and altho it certainly is not without its good points - such as scenery, good people in general, nice restaraunts - it has a megaton of bad points.

High taxes, ruling class serving their funders and not their people.... when I read they wanted an outright ban on e-cigs with basically no reason or evidence of harm .. I was enraged.

I'll throw it out there ... I am a conservative fiscally and I am a moderate socially ... which means I basically pay my taxes, do my job, and don't screw with anyone. I expect the same in return.

In New York, you have 10 million people living on an island, and from what I can tell those people are bat..... insane for the most part ... and then you have "upstate", where 12 million more people live.

Where I reside in upstate, we do not matter. Nevermind we provide the power, water and food for those crazy jerks on the island.

Politicians, especially those on the left, do not care about the good of the people who provide, they care about winning elections. Trust me, if the kooks on the island get wind of this, and decide they do not like it, e-cigs WILL be gone.

The government has become far far too entrenched in our lives. I have been yelling about this since I started noticing in 2000 .... all of us in New York HAVE TO elect a governor and a senate / assembly in 2010 that will stop more government interference, wreckless spending, and career politics just to get re-elected. When this happens, we will not have to worry about the government taking away more rights, including those of e-cigs.

This November, I am voting Palladino, and I would suggest any e-smoker in New York do the same.

[Little Girl]

The question is what's the best thing to do between now and November? Does it make sense to try and make this an election issue? Do we write our congresspersons and ask them to explain where they stand? Do we try to expose this for what it is (Albany banning e-cigs so they can maximize the revenue from tobacco taxes)- maybe push the press proactively to make it an issue? ... Do we go to local rallys and make our point?

All of these are great ideas! The more we publicize the issue, and the more people we talk to about it, the better of a chance we have to prevent these little miracles from being turned into criminal goods.

Also, I wouldn't so much push the press as try to tempt the press into deep interest by showing that this is a huge controversy (which they usually love) that they can possibly influence if they really do their homework. What journalist wouldn't froth at the mouth at a chance to affect history itself? No matter how anybody looks at it, this is a Moment In History, because this is the first time ever that there has been a genuine (comfortable, painless, pleasant!) alternative (solution!) to smoking.

I'll add a couple of additional ideas:

• Contact local cigarette vendors and suggest that they sell e-cigarettes.
• Contact colleges/universities in your area and suggest that they (specifically journalism students or medical students) do research on e-cigarettes and publish the results somewhere.
• Talk to business owners who may have been affected by the ban on indoor use of cigarettes and encourage them to post some sort of sign near their entry that states that the use of e-cigarettes is welcome inside their establishments.
• Talk to the people who run fitness centers near you and let them know that ecigarettes are a viable alternative for their smoking patrons who wish to become healthier.
• Contact your local quit smoking programs and find out whether they recommend/offer e-cigarettes, and if not, educate them about e-cigarettes as something they should offer.

These are just some additional ideas. I'm sure others in here will have more to post. Basically, these are simple things all of us can do regardless of whether we have contacts in government or with specific businesses, etc.

There's power in numbers - every single person we reach with this information is one more person who will care what happens when this thing comes to a vote again.

[Fumes]

The government has become far far too entrenched in our lives. I have been yelling about this since I started noticing in 2000 .... all of us in New York HAVE TO elect a governor and a senate / assembly in 2010 that will stop more government interference, wreckless spending, and career politics just to get re-elected. When this happens, we will not have to worry about the government taking away more rights, including those of e-cigs.

This November, I am voting Palladino, and I would suggest any e-smoker in New York do the same.

I want you to understand that I appreciate what you are all saying. Good Ideas from Little Girl and Beans and the rest, BUTT, what you dont get is that its too late

If you have seen this watch it again, if not, its time.

YouTube - Police State 4: The Rise of FEMA Full Length

Fumes

[jimho]

How about instead of watching 2 hrs of conspiracy theories we get everyone to spend 2 hrs making this an issue?

[bliynd]

How about instead of watching 2 hrs of conspiracy theories we get everyone to spend 2 hrs making this an issue?

now thats an excellent idea i like your style

[MitchellBeans]

now thats an excellent idea i like your style

Good point.

I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories most of the time.

Also, vote out liberals, start getting freedom back. Its how it is.

[Dan321]

Banning the sale of the electronic cigarette is outrageous. They might as well just ban regular cigarettes as well, because lets face it, regular cigarettes are more harmful than e-cigs.

[bhima]

God the "anti-freeze" argument is so tired. Isn't some amount of water in anti-freeze? Does that mean water is bad for you because its an ingredient in anti-freeze?? I wonder if big tobacco has something to do with this because there are a ton of "grey market" products that have not been approved by the FDA that can still be sold, there are just a few restrictions imposed on them until FDA approval is met (ie: they have to label the product as not being approved by the FDA and I think there are some advertising restrictions). This outright ban until FDA approval stinks of big tobacco lobbyists to me. They have read the research, they know e-cigs get people off their cigarettes and they are terrified of that fact.

When a politician bloviates using the "but what about the children" line, I can only assume they've been bought and sold by a party interested in the destruction of e-cigs. That "party" probably has a marlboro or camel sticking out its mouth. How hard would it be to just ban the sales of these things to minors and then put advertising restrictions on to them until the FDA has approved them? It would not be hard of course, which leads me to believe these politicians are either completely ignorant (highly unlikely) or they are doing the bidding of someone else.

[bhima]

The only real problem with this country is the lobbying industry and special interests. All these other problems stem from that. Of course, the only way that's going to stop is if congress voted a bill into law that put strict, restrictive caps on campaigning, made it illegal for them to accept any donations, prohibited direct lobbying efforts from corporations, and held themselves to such strict ethical standards that they couldn't keep their jobs if they accepted so much as a Snickers bar from someone attempting to influence policy or even with a stake in policy -- basically, the pigs voting to not be fed.

We're screwed.

For the most part, this is totally the crux of our political system. Here in California, we tried to put a proposition up to change at least a portion of our elections to be publicly funded. And of course, the same people that ..... and moan that all politicians are corrupt voted down the only prop that would actually start to move us into a cleaner system. If we want effective government, if we want the Ron Paul's or the Dennis Kucinich's of the world to actually have more of a say in our government, then we need to absolutely abolish the way we allow corporations to pay for elections. It is the ONLY way to a Just government system. Until then, we have a few good apples in congress/Senate that don't require a ton of private interest funds to get elected, but then we have an exponentially large amount of bad apples that require special interest money to get elected, and they know how to keep getting that money--its not by providing the proper service to the voting populace.