Coffee Meme’s Rant Points to a Larger Problem

OK, alright, it had been a while since we spoke directly with COFFEE (see previous post), but we usually just have a cup of the stuff, so to speak, and get on with our day. So it was a little bracing to actually engage with our recalcitrant COFFEE meme, which was something we would just as soon not repeat for a while. In the meantime, though, it should be noted that COFFEE has a point: people don’t really seem to care if something causes cancer, especially when they like the stuff and are even a little (or, OK, wholly…) dependent upon it’s psychopharmacological effects.

What’s the big deal? People take drugs after watching television commercials that tell them that the side effects are as bad as the disease symptoms from which they are seeking relief. They pump gas in California after reading on a placard, often on the pump itself, that breathing gasoline fumes will cause cancer. They live in Los Angeles their entire lives knowing that the smog, the nano-particals especially, have a high likelihood of eventually killing them. (No one has yet sued to ensure that Prop 65 warnings appear on all freeway signs on the way into Los Angeles.)

But there is a huge problem with all of this: Prop 65, the law in California upon which the “Coffee Cancer Lawsuit” is based, states that the public must be plainly warned at the point of purchase if they are being exposed to chemicals, or even naturally occurring substances (like acrylomide, a naturally occurring byproduct of roasting coffee) if those substances have been shown to cause cancer (and the standard is very low). If they aren’t so duly informed, there is a “bounty hunter” provision in the measure that opens the door to spurious litigation that can and has cost California businesses, in general, millions of dollars since the Proposition was passed in 1986. Why is the litigation spurious? Because there is no evidence that, for example, people pump gas into their cars less, or even wear protective masks while doing so since the Prop 65 Warnings went up at gas stations. Nor is it likely that people will drink less coffee once they are told that acrylomides might have an infinitesimal chance of  causing them cancer, but coffee may cost them more thanks to the Bounty Hunters created in the proposition. (They were originally defined, naïvely, in the in the statute as something akin to whistle blowers, but since then they have morphed into a group of attorneys specializing in Prop 65 “Gotcha” lawsuits.)

Prop 65, the “Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act” of 1986, is bad law, but it is not unusual, the whole “Proposition Proposition,” if you will, is bad government. It enables an aspiring band of thieves (whether from the right or left) to get laws on the books not through the corrupt-but-codified process of shoving them through the state legislature and then having the Governor usually having to either veto them or sign them into law (and explain why he’ doing so), but rather by going directly to the public with grossly distorted facts and mounds of cash for advertising. As a result, California has some of the worst laws on the books that money can buy — Prop 65 is one of those laws and it was easily gamed; coffee drinkers will pay the price but they won’t be safer. Someone, though, will be much, much richer due to some very twisted circuitry in the works of California’s legal system.