Consider both state/federal government want to tax a life-saving smoking cessation method after collecting BILLIONS in smoking revenue, not using it to combat smoking and thus failing to do so. Government penalizing smokers for overcoming government failure. This must not stand.
In last week's hearing, @SenAricNesbitt responded to your propsed vaping tax with his starting point at zero%, as a rule, @jimananich. I commend that, in general, but this proposed tax is different. You propose taxing someone for saving their own life.
This after Mi has collected BILLIONS to combat smoking and spent it elsewhere. Mi greed failed Mi smokers. Mi smokers are saving their own lives and you seek to penalize them for your failures. If you want more revenue, additionally tax the #1 killer of Michiganders, not the cure 
Those vaping, ex-smokers bring additional value to Mi with new Mi businesses, jobs, sales tax, increased productivity, less sick leave, reduced health care costs, a more active, healthy lifestyle that promotes the #PureMichigan ideal and tourism. There are 2.4 million Mi smokers.
Those smokers aren't being reached, nor saved by the paltry sum Mi spends in combating smoking, this is fact. Other than the 1.2 billion the state collects each yr from them while they die, theyre a drain on our economy and society as they sicken, suffer and die. @RepJackBergman
The Mi e-cig industry IS reaching them $ saving their lives in record numbers. @realDonaldTrump just achnowleged it. I challange you to consider: e-cigs are 5 times as effective as state-supported methods. They are healthy & safe as those methods, even safer than Chantix.
Mi has a smoking cessation program that is safely and effectively reducing smoking rates in both youth and adults, the Mi vaping industry. Embrace them, encourage them, promote them, award them, work WITH them to insure youth access is curbed while eliminating combustible smoking
Jim, I'd wager ANYTHING you choose, that you don't yet know the less obvious way electronic cigarettes reduce youth smoking rates. Its quite simple, there is a chain and we break it.
Kids w smoking parents are 72% more likely to smoke. 86% of long term smokers start before age 18. 2 of every 3 that smoke ONE cigarette become smokers. Over 50% of them die. Ecigs are helping more parents to quit than all else combined, which eliminates that 72%. @SenEdMcBroom
What astounds us most, is not that lawmakers want to ban, restrict, or tax e-cigs. It is that you fail to see that e-cigs have the potential to be the single greatest positive public health contribution in all of history, if you would only embrace them.
Look at England. Just look at their smoking rates, look at September 2019. As @GovWhitmer announced a flavor ban, England announced a 1 month drop in their smoking rate that exceeded the US yearly drop and they did it by PROMOTING ECIGS.
Every lawmaker now has a choice. You can try to regulate and restrict a 21st century life-saving device with 20th century dogma that has utterly failed to curb use of the #1 killer of humans, or you can actually save lives with us. More lives than anything in human history.
While you wrote HR0781, I stood face-to-face with actual Mi smokers and helped them to instantly, easily and enjoyably, permanently quit smoking. You wrote a bill that would increase the # of Mi smokers while I saved lives. You and I should trade jobs for a while.
Do not mistake me. I'm not insulting, belittling, or blaming you. WE failed to educate the public and government, as a community and industry. This situation is more our fault than yours. But it must stop, now. We're reaching out, but you must be ready for this paradigm shift
If we truly care about this state and the lives of Michiganders, we have to work together, but it is you who has the hardest task. You'll need to understand why these groups say what they do: cei.org/content/fear-p…
You'll need to understand that health care professionals, when not profiting from dying smokers, say this and why they say it. I've spent 6 years, daily, learning this. You and Mi smokers don't have that luxury. rcplondon.ac.uk/news/promote-e…
2.4 million Michigan and 37 million American smokers are slowly, painfully dying.They desperately need help.They need to be saved. They need a champion. Our governor, @GovWhitmer chose to be their supervillian, for whatever reason. You CAN be their superhero...
