A New Website Dedicated to Advocacy: “Consumers For Advocacy”

There is a new website online dedicated to vaping advocacy that caught our attention. This is a site that has no agenda and has no organization affiliation. ConsumersforAdvocacy.com offers tools and information for people keen on learning more about advocating for the vape lifestyle.

Tony Ottomanelli II

November 1, 2016

A Vaper has More than Simply One Label

Being a vaper nowadays is not defined by just a brief description of “one who vaporizes nicotine.” It can’t be that simple. Just as the lifestyle of Vaping has evolved, so have the consumers. Some vapers are now advocates, activists, demonstrators, business owners, entrepreneurs, writers, vloggers, bloggers, hobbyists and can even be considered as members of a community that has grown to become a marginalized and polarized group within American society.

Coincidentally, the homepage for Consumers For Advocacy touches on this very notion. It states: “We are vapers. We are the coil builders, the cloud chuckers, the tricksters and the modders… We are open-system users, closed-system users, drippers and tankers… We are ex-smokers, current smokers and people who have never picked up a cigarette… We are newbies, vets and advocates… We are brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers… We are dedicated… We are passionate… We are united… We are consumers.”

Simply from this well-designed message, it becomes apparent that the community seems to already be aware that vapers are indeed a collection of a diverse group of individuals. Unfortunately, the announcement of the FDA Regulations on Vapor Products on May 5th of 2016 were quickly published 5 days after the initial regulatory launch.

Regulations Spark More Advocacy

The new rules are highly restrictive for the vaping industry in the U.S. and have become a confrontational topic between the vaping community members. Creating more divided opinions among countless individual can make advocacy movements difficult to organize. There are many great ideas for resolving the challenges facing the vapor industry, yet it seems as if so many advocates disagree on exactly what the best solution shall be.

Truly, the most important question, would belong the lines of inquiring whether the vaping community members allow these regulations to cause it’s unity to ultimately diminish?

That is the reality of the situation and the creators of the new website “Consumers For Advocacy” have recognized this, essentially taking matters into their own hands by dedicating an entire website to an area of debate where many vapers have been disagreeable. What they have done is organize the advocacy resources available within the vape community.

Typically, when learning more about everything that is going on with vape advocacy, one must visit a vast number of sites, one after the other. It’s very time-consuming to be forced to surf the Internet for countless hours. There would be much more time for vapers to actually advocate if there were one single site, informing vapers of all the necessary information circling the web. This is what “Consumers For Advocacy,” is trying to bring to the community (http://www.consumersforadvocacy.com/).

One Single Place For All Vaping Advocacy Needs

Consumers For Advocacy is essentially designed to be “THE” ultimate site for vaping advocacy. It is simply the collective vision of 4 individual consumers/advocates who wanted to see a website devoted strictly to advocacy where all of the advocating information is organized in one place.

There are direct links made available for your state’s legislators along with vaper testimonial stories and a section devoted to providing scientific data and health studies related to the Vaping lifestyle. Also, there are direct links to the websites for all the major organizations involved in advocating on behalf of vapers, such as CASAA, SFATA, The Vaping Militia, VTA, R2BSmokeFree, AVA, NotBlowingSmoke, etc. It is important to remember that Consumers For Advocacy is not at all an organization in itself, nor is it siding with any particular advocacy group or official association. One of the founders, Albert Michael Harper says, “We’re taking the side of education and advocacy.”

Consumers For Advocacy has intentions to be a primary hub of information, highlighting all of the current and relevant advocacy movements.

Consumers For Advocacy has intentions to be a primary hub of information, highlighting all of the current and relevant advocacy movements, causes and courses of action that exist out there today – the founders have made their contact information available to encourage Vapers to inform them of any other movements they may have accidentally left out or forgot to include on their site. Afterall, there is so much information to consider. Many advocates would probably agree that the advocacy sector of the vaping industry has also become slightly saturated.

If you are an advocate for vaping you may wonder which is the best or the worst strategic direction to follow nowadays when deciphering between all the paths to take on your road to defend vaping? There are so many causes to donate to, organizations to join, state legislators to write, phone calls to make, films to see, small businesses to support, smokers to educate, protests to join, petitions to sign, and much more to consider for a chosen path of advocating as a vaper. Some could claim that advocacy itself has become another type of industrial microcosm within the vaping sphere. Thus, it may seem confusing at times and cause vapers to feel as if they’re unsure of where to turn in order to make the biggest and best impact when advocating.

For the founders of Consumers For Advocacy, the launch of this site is not a declaration of founding some separate consumer advocacy association but a simple proactive action to gather advocacy information to the consumers.

“Without consumers, there’s no industry” says Albert Michael Harper.

As consumers we felt strongly that this type of site needed to be in existence. We’re all very proud of it and hoping it unites the community more so than it is now. It took a lot of time to organize all that information and it was worth it.Albert Michael Harper, co-funder of Consumers For Advocacy

Altogether, Consumers For Advocacy, serves as a beneficial tool for helping the vape community get organized in their advocacy endeavors. Their purpose is to educate and motivate the consumer population by providing them with options for advocating about vape-related issues. They have no bureaucratic intentions, only the hope of providing guidance to resources for any vaper to choose from.

Message & Purpose

Consumers For Advocacy is genuine in their message and purpose. On the site, it states: “We are here to express information that is not biased and is backed by scientific research. We will support those findings with medical reports, sourced articles and professionals in and out of the industry. Overall, the socially progressive website “Consumers For Advocacy” could very well be considered as ahead of it’s time and long past due and now could very well become the vape community’s ultimate tool as it continues to build its foundation.