I agree, it's why I never stopped mine. I believe in hitting them from every angle until they're forced to acknowledge us.
FDA lets get a petition submitted to the whitehouse
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Me too, but only 3 signatures on the whitehouse.gov petition. We're not putting up much of a fight. The FDA thanks everyone for their cooperation.
I presumed that was the function of the FDA. Have you let them hear from you as a tax payer?
The FDA has the authority to regulate the sales of products that pose a danger to public health. They do not have the authority to regulate products because they don't know. Ignorance is never an excuse in the real world. It shouldn't be an excuse in policy.
That's what I'm trying to do by signing the petition, letting them hear from me.
Since this issue of "deeming" came to light Ive been noodling around the FDA site one too many times.
The voluminous materials there makes the site difficult to navigate but you, and working w/CASAA or any of the advocate groups are preaching to the choir here at ECF. please get your support for vaping products out to their ears. if you visit the FDA site more than 2-3 minutes a site survey will also pop up if its not blocked by your browser. Be loud Pineappledan,
its the next 24 months that we must be very loud!
I was raised to defend what I believe is right, and stand against what I believe is wrong. Rest assured, I will stand up for change, even if I stand alone.
As has been stated earlier in the thread, there where already two white house petitions that where successful in getting enough signatures, and both where brushed off by the white house. Unless you get signatures in the millions they are not worth the paper (or bandwidth) they are written on. Signing a petition may feel good, but is completely useless.
Besides that little issue, another problem is that nearly all of the petitions that have shown up in regards to vaping are badly written (including both of the ones you are promoting. Les's in particular is essentially anti-THR and promotes the same lies we have been fed by the ANTZ). I will make a guess and say those that have been around a long time and have a good understanding of the issues, and have the skills to write a good petition, know enough to understand how useless they are so are not going to bother writing and promoting something that has little to no value.
Petitions are to easy to ignore to be of any real worth. The white house has already done it twice. Doing the same thing that has already failed, and expecting a different result is not a definition of effective advocacy.
As previously stated in this thread, and not yet challenged, these petitions can be shared with advocacy groups to help support our plight.
Expecting others to speak for you is not a definition of effective advocacy either.
Hopefully I never understand that my first amendment right to petition the government is useless.
Always the easiest way out, criticism. Hey, takes less time than writing 20 letters to local, state, federal resources.
cheers
You are implying with your response that anyone who does not sign petitions is expecting someone else to speak for them. That is a bogus response. It is about effective advocacy and the best way to petition the government. Petitions are not the way to do it if you actually want to be effective.
Just so we know what we all should be doing, what have been the effective advocacy efforts on a federal level, and what effects have they had?
Here are some groups that petitioned and protested for years to get their voices heard. They did not give up after a few petitions were denied:
Women's rights movement
the abolition of slavery
the civil rights movement
The lifting of prohibition
marijuana legalization in Montana
gay marriage
the cruelty to animals movement
the american indian movement
If all these groups taught me anything, it's that no 1 action brings change, but a combination of many actions taken, and giving up accomplishes nothing.
Senator Johnson from the state I live in has stated that he got involved in the vaping issue because people contacted him. I would have to assume a good many people contacted him. I have been getting plenty enough clues from other politicians that the same thing is happening elsewhere. These people are hearing directly from there constituents, and that is effective. It is orders of magnitude more effective then signing a petition that they will likely never see.
Again you are implying that by not signing a badly written petition that has been shown to be entirely useless, that those of us that don't sign them are giving up. That is completely bogus on your part.
I'm confused, could you please elaborate? If petitions are not an effective way to petition the government...
And just to be clear I am saying that if you only join an advocacy group, you are NOT speaking for yourself, you are relying on others to speak for you. Signing a petition IS speaking for yourself, because your signature is there (whether its paper or digital) saying you support the cause outlined in the petition.
How many of us have an aarp, aaa, or papa johns reward membership? Does that mean we support what they advocate? If AARP gets up and says they advocate something, how do we know it's what the members support? If CASAA says they advocate something, how do we know how many of their members support it? Does CASAA list their members? How do they describe the percentage of the voting population that is behind their cause? That is very important in a democracy, and petitions show a solid number of people SAYING they directly support something. Petitions are tools to be used to describe the level of support for a cause, and advocacy groups are tools to be used to collect and convey tools like petitions, medical studies, and other data, and convey that information to the public and legislature to promote the cause.
Actually, Senator Johnson stated that he got involved after he heard from a business owner in his constituency, specifically Christian Berkey of Johnson Creek, but that's beside the point.
What most of the advocates in vaping seem to not acknowledge is that we are not big enough on our own to truly matter. By "we" I mean vapers who are actively involved in advocacy. We are not effectively spreading the message. We need to engage those who are NOT ALREADY INVOLVED and promote awareness. Look at the ice bucket challenge.
So you are saying we're all set then? all we have to do is write our representatives and we're done? I did that so it's time to kick back and watch this legislation dissolve.
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