December 4 2019
Good Afternoon,
First, I wanted to let you know the dates for the next two meetings because they will be important as MD’s session draws near. The first meeting will be Tuesday December 17th, 6pm. This will be our annual holiday party at Perry’s. You are welcome to bring your significant other, your employees, your managers ect. We will be having a full dinner that night with carving stations and a short meeting just to put out important information. The cost of the dinner is $25 per person and please let Mary Yeager know how many you will be bringing because Perry’s needs to know how much food to make. We have done this in the past and it has been a great opportunity to meet the everyone connected to our members.
The second meeting scheduled will be Tuesday, January 21st at 6pm. This will be roughly one week after the MD session starts and we will have a good handle of what is being thrown at us legislatively and we will have a good talk about our strategy moving forward and we will identify people we may need to speak at some legislative hearings. Also, we will be having a voting session for board positions. Currently we have President, Vice Pres, Secretary, Treasurer and a board member with no title. If you would like to know more about any of these positions and the duties/responsibilities, please let any current board member know. Anyone who is a full paying dues member may run for these positions.
Yesterday was our first meeting of the Comptrollers Ecigarette EFACTS task force. We went into this meeting expecting to be attacked. There were several panelists on everything from Vaping 101(presented by the MVA) to health officials, effects of nicotine, current enforcement in MD and solving the youth epidemic. The meeting was live on FB and if you have not seen it you can view it here https://www.facebook.com/ComptrollerofMaryland/. After the meeting was over we went around the room and had individual discussions with members of the task force. This is where the most meaningful discussions took place. Normally when we go to Annapolis to testify its us attacking them and vice versa. The air was much different yesterday in that everyone seemed to understand that we all must come to a middle ground when it comes to vaping, this gives us hope for something positive to happen.
There is going to be a meeting at The Vapor Emporium in New Market on December 21st at 9am. We are looking for any other shops in Fredrick county to attend and meet up with Elmer and Senator Hough. Please spread the word if you know shops in the county and can attend. Please contact Elmer for any additional information.
Newsletters will be more often as session starts to make sure everyone is updated on what is going down. When session starts, we will see a variety of bills that are anti vaping pop up, including a flavor ban. We are working with representatives already and have been for several months on curbing youth use so we can implement other measures in lieu of a flavor ban. Also working in the comptroller’s task force to come up with solutions that do not include putting vape shops out of business.
Again, thank you for being a member of the MVA and supporting the industry in MD. We are working diligently in getting results and establishing relationships with our elected officials.
Matthew Milby
MVA
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