2014 Legislative Session Update - Week 8

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2014 Legislative Session Update

Week 8 Update
Friday, April, 25 2014

With only one more week left in Florida’s 2014 Legislation Session, you have already helped us make quite an impact. 

E-Cigarettes

In an exciting turn of events, the e-cigarette bills (HB 169 and SB 224) were amended on the House floor, stripping out the dangerous preemption language that would have prevented local communities from further regulating tobacco products! The amendment passed with a vote of 72 to 46. If you would like to see how your member voted, click here. If your Representative voted in favor of the amendment (yeas are shown in green), please take a moment to thank them for protecting local control of tobacco products. 

Very special thanks are in order for those members who went the extra mile to help us get the harmful language removed from the bill. Representatives Bill Hager (R-Boca Raton), Debbie Mayfield (R- Vero Beach) and Jim Waldman (D- Coconut Creek) rallied members of both parties for a truly bipartisan vote on the measure. Please be sure to thank them for their work on our behalf. 

Appropriations

Budget negotiations began between the House and Senate this week. As I write this message, some of the programs we care about most have been “bumped” to leadership, meaning the amount of money that will ultimately be allocated to those programs is still unresolved. Specifically, we still have a lot more work to do on the Mary Brogan program. Below is a quick update on how our top priorities have fared in each chamber so far:

• The Mary Brogan Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program
      - House - $1.24 million in nonrecurring (or single year) funding and $300,000 in recurring for a total of $1.54
      - Senate - $25,000 in nonrecurring and $300,000 in recurring for a total of $325,000
• The James & Esther King Biomedical Research Program - $10 million in both chambers
• The Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program - $10 million in both chambers
• The Tobacco Prevention and Education Program - $66.6 million in both chambers

Updated information on ACS CAN’s legislative priorities can be found at www.fightcancer.org/florida. You can follow the action in real-time on Twitter at @ACSCAN_Florida and please be sure to click here to “like” us on Facebook.

Yours in the fight,
Heather

Heather Youmans
Florida Government Relations Director
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network