Thread by @VaporAmerican

🧵One of the best aspects of the vape community is that we come in all political stripes, united in the effort to help our fellow Americans. We want to reach everyone, so let’s talk first about why the Progressive Caucus ought to be sticking up for vapers. THREAD

Begin with the fact that millions of low- and middle-income Americans have switched from cigarettes to vaping, in a valiant effort to take charge of their own health destiny.
nytimes.com/2017/12/08/hea…

Why so many in that income range? In part because vaping is far more affordable than cigarettes and pricey pharmaceutical products that have much lower efficacy in smoking cessation than vaping.

Remember the president’s pledge that no new taxes would fall on the shoulders of Americans making less than $400K? Well the gargantuan tax on vaping in the BBB bill would hit ordinary people on fixed incomes, making cigarettes the only affordable choice.
vaping360.com/vape-news/1111…

Do progressives care about pharma companies and the tobacco industry predating on ordinary Americans? Why yes, they do indeed! And what are those industry lobbyists saying about vaping? That the government should severely restrict it, so that people have no choice!

Those lobbying efforts succeeded at the Dept. of Defense, which removed all vaping products from the shelves of military retailers.
defense.gov/News/News-Stor…

Countless service members visit our shops and they are outraged that the Pentagon wants to deprive them the right to switch to a vastly safer alternative to cigarettes!

Progressives aren’t crazy about billionaires throwing their weight around and wrenching public policy. Yet this guy, net worth $55 Billion, has created his own private army of lobbyists, PR flacks, & front groups to twist regulatory policy on nicotine in his preferred direction.

Bloomberg spends hundreds of millions each year at the local, state, and federal levels influencing public officials to do his bidding.

Here’s a recent piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy (hardly a right-wing outlet) detailing the unaccountable harm this man is wreaking around the world.
philanthropy.com/article/bloomb…

Progressives are also at the forefront of the harm-reduction movement. In sexual health and substance abuse, progressives argue we should lessen the negative consequences for human behaviors.
progressivecaucuscenter.org/overdose-preve…

Yet the current govt approach is to outlaw and punish vaping, creating a black market and driving people back to smoking. filtermag.org/vape-bans-illi…

Progressives support small business & home-grown entrepreneurs. Guess what, our trade association is comprised of thousands of start-up business, creating jobs & investment while innovating a method that’s helped more people quit smoking than any giant company or federal agency.

FDA, USPS, DoD, and moralists in Congress want to crush our industry. That means our small businesses have to lay off workers, shutter our stores, and abandon our dreams . . .

. . . while Michael Bloomberg jets around the world aggrandizing himself to the prohibition front groups he lavishes with cash.

So how about it, @USProgressives, @AOC, @RashidaTlaib, @BernieSanders, and @SenWarren? Are you gonna let deep pocket interests stomp on the ordinary Americans who are working so hard to improve our own health and livelihoods?