Tobacco Users Unite! (You have nothing to lose but your butts)

How is it that so many people in the U.S. use tobacco and yet they are so easily defeated in the legislature? Well, for one, they aren't working together. The pipe smokers think the cigarette smokers are common and the cigar smokers look down on the pipe smokers and they all condescend to the chewers.
We are, however, all in the same leaky boat. Last year, the federal government raised the tax on RYO/MYO (Roll Your Own/Make Your Own) tobacco by an obscene amount. This, of course, angered the RYO crowd, but I didn't hear much in the way of protest from other tobacco users. But then, as a way to skirt the tax, some RYO tobacco makers started marketing RYO tobacco as "pipe tobacco," which caused congress to consider jacking up the tax on pipe tobacco too. Suddenly the pipe smokers got upset and started fighting against the change. They may win the day, but they never would have had this fight (and never would have had to fight it alone), if they and all the other tobacco users came to the defense of their cigarette smoking brethren.
Groups like Cigar Rights of America are a good start, but we really need an organization made up of all kinds of tobacco users. There's strength in unity and there's strength in numbers. Just ask the NRA, which despite the name, lobbies for all types of gun owners. Or the AARP, which lets people join at the un-elderly age of 50. This ain't a three pipe problem, even without an umbrella organization, we can all join together, informally, by voicing our distaste for more draconian anti-tobacco legislation simply by paying attention and putting an effort into defeating bad laws, no matter what the particular tobacco product under attack. If you see a petition against raising pipe tobacco taxes (for example), sign it, no matter what you smoke, chew, dip, or snuff. We need to fight and we need the help of our fellow tobaccophiles. What's bad for one type of tobacco is bad for all the rest.