Thank you for sharing this. I was unable to watch this, nor had enough time to seek out and listen through the whole thing.
I was totally impressed with her opening statement. How many millions of smokers could tell a similar story?
The counter arguments point out the problem. Nobody had their mind changed.
I disagree. There certainly are some that already have their mind made up and won't listen to reason.
However, with this recent "crisis", along with some other, unrelated attacks on our personal freedoms in the US, those people are having to be less sneaky about their hidden agendas. In just the testimony clip in my first quote, the gloves came off.
The chairman, Rep. Krishnamoorthi, was clear, and even condescending, about refusing to listen and consider testimony.
Dr. Rizzo seemed to care more about his own credibility than national health, the way he dismissed the UK study. Had he been really interested in the health of smokers, he would have at least mentioned that it was being investigated. Instead, he dismissed it out of hand.
Rep. Pressley just took a pot shot by quoting some obviously creative statistics, then yielded so that there was no possibility for a challenge.
Rep. Tlaib was even more blatant and attacked Ms. Porter's credibility on matters unrelated to the discussion topic.
They aren't even trying to hide their contempt for people who are affected by government restriction or prohibition of legal products consumed by law abiding citizens.
However, it was clear that some other representatives
were listening. Even the ones that seemed predisposed against vaping, were asking good questions and getting great answers. I think it will serve to produce support for opposition. Regular people who vote will see this. It's the counter-point that the news media needs to present an interesting story people will watch or click on, no matter how biased the source may be. People are getting sick of one-sided, agenda driven "reporting." The counterpoint is compelling, because there aren't too many people who can say they don't have beloved family members, or even know anyone, struggling with smoking.
No. I don't think this hearing, in and of itself, will move lawmakers that were in attendance by much. However, I do believe it is one of a few channels that gets the truth out to the general public that otherwise doesn't care about vape related issues beyond what they see on their Facebook feed.
Vicki (Porter) McKenna is fairly popular talk show host in southeastern WI. She'll bring up vape issues on her show and discuss it like no other talk show host I'm familiar with. Always enjoy listening to her talk about vaping.
She keeps it real, no doubt about that. I can see why she's popular there.
