The Freedom Party of Ontario is a political party in Ontario, Canada. (wikipedia)
When we go to the Statehouse, it's one or two of us against a whole slew of tobacco lobbyists and their partners. You can see that this is a classic David versus Goliath with us going against big tobacco.
I think it's just historical relationships in the area. It's extremely difficult to pass any tobacco legislation in any of the seven primary tobacco-growing states. Going up against the tobacco industry is serious, serious work.
What we need is a really strong, powerful advocate in a key position to advocate change, and we've lacked that.
The intent of that money was to provide funds for prevention, treatment, education and cessation programs. And that clearly did not happen in South Carolina. We're ranked 51st in funding for these programs and 51st in (cigarette) tax. The state is doing next to nothing.
