Tobacco Vote
James Standish, director of the North American Division’s religious liberty office writes:
Tomorrow we have a vote on our tobacco bill in the House. It is critical we win the vote, and not just win, but get a veto proof majority for obvious reasons. Also, if we get that, it puts a lot of pressure on the Senate to schedule a vote before this Congress ends.
If we fail to win, it may be years before we get back to this point (I’ve been working this about 5 years, and this is our first vote). Of course, Republicans have always held it up, but there is some pressure from southern Democrats not to have a vote as well due to the impact it may have on marginal seats and picking up new seats. It has taken real guts to schedule a vote on this.
At NARLA we’re half way through calling every single undecided office – almost 100.
You can send emails in support of the FDA regulation of tobacco in about 2 minutes.
So far we have a measly 700 or so letters sent in yesterday. I hope we can get to 5,000 or so before the vote tomorrow.
This is our chance on this huge issue. The World Health Organization estimates that a BILLION people will die premature painful deaths this century from tobacco related illnesses. We can do something positive to stop that in the heart of the problem – sadly – right here in the U.S.
