Coffee in California now served with sugar, cream and a cancer warning
Proposition 65 continues to brew nanny-state havoc.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall our January report that a judge in California was going to decide whether coffee should carry warnings stating that it contains chemicals known to the state to cause long-term health effects, per the rules enacted after passage of Proposition 65 in 1986.
The long-running lawsuit claimed Starbucks and about 90 other companies, including grocery stores and retail shops, failed to follow a state law requiring warning signs about hazardous chemicals found everywhere from household products to workplaces to the environment. The warning pertains to the trace amount of acrylamide found in delicious, caffeine-filled brews, which “is a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive harm”.
The ruling has officially come down, and it is everything a nanny-stater would want.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said Wednesday that the coffee makers hadn’t presented the proper grounds at trial to prevail.
“While plaintiff offered evidence that consumption of coffee increases the risk of harm to the fetus, to infants, to children and to adults, defendants’ medical and epidemiology experts testified that they had no opinion on causation,” Berle wrote in his proposed ruling. “Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving … that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health.”
What does this ruling mean for businesses that sell coffee?
California businesses will be required to provide a “clear and reasonable” warning before knowingly and intentionally exposing anyone to a Prop. 65 listed chemical. The state offers a few suggestions for what that means, including posting signs at a workplace, distributing notices at a rental housing complex or publishing notices in a newspaper.
Penalties for failing to do so could be up to $2,500 per person exposed each day over eight years, according to The Associated Press.
A look at the actual science shows that the data tying low doses of acrylamide to adverse health effects isn’t quite settled, either.
When coffee beans are roasted, the compound acrylamide is produced as a by-product. “Acrylamide is ubiquitous in our food chain. It’s a product of high heat and prolonged cooking, particularly with carbohydrates,” says Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. It’s found in fried potatoes, for example, as well as in cigarette smoke and some products such as adhesives. “It’s a chemical to which we have frequent exposure.”
Some studies have found an increased cancer risk in mice and rats who were fed acrylamide, but those studies used doses between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than levels that people would be exposed to in food. There have not been strong studies in humans to demonstrate the carcinogenicity of acrylamide.
Crunching the numbers, you would have to drink 64 liters of coffee a day to achieve the level of exposure the test rats experienced. Nevertheless, under the stringent rules of Proposition 65, here is a sample of some of the new decor you will see in California’s coffee shops!
I will simply point out that this sign will be ignored, just as the same signs for alcohol are. Legal Insurrection readers would be unsurprised to discover Californians like to drink, to the point there is a proposal to extend bar open times to 4 am statewide!
Normal people are treating this ruling with all the seriousness that it deserves.
California has deteriorated into a tragic dump, with streets covered in trash, graffiti, human waste, and needles, but a liberal judge worries about the dangers of coffee. #ProgressiveInsanity #MoonbeamMania https://t.co/URP4Z0qqSU
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) March 30, 2018
Coffee in California must have cancer warning. Great. Isn’t gov’t activism wonderful? Now kids will debate which is worse: coffee or tobacco… https://t.co/MHh7xrnrRl
— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) March 30, 2018
But, perhaps the best analysis comes from a natural toothpaste manufacturer that is forced to comply with the Prop. 65 label rules.
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Comments
Why don’t you move to Libby, Montana? Its cheap and they don’t have no stinkin’ regulations.
It is easy to make fun of what seems like an overreach. But that says nothing about what environmental regulations are really about.
I am extremely happy that the air I breathe and water I drink are much cleaner than when I was young. I am happy that the garden where I grow some food is not contaminated by lead.
I do hope you don’t get to learn about some environment hazard first hand. It is ironic that many conservatives started supporting gay rights when someone close to them came out. Even the Darth Vader, himself, changed his view when his daughter Mary came out.
Does someone close to you need to suffer before you can understand how serious these matters are?
funny how some people just HAVE to defend fascism.
i guess they think they will be in charge of the camps, instead of the first ones put in them.
Will I have clean water?
No. I’ll pee in it.
History has proven over and over again that your preferred version of government makes life far more dangerous for everyone not in the Ruling Class.
Right after you have clean underwear.
Which could be in the far distant future.
The ironic part is that the laundry machine is probably right next to him where he’s living in his mother’s basement.
When you are capable of getting nothing (by doing nothing,) and you are morally bankrupt, you jump onto the leftist fascism wagon, hoping for free crumbs handed to you by doing the bidding of your handlers.
In the case of the obamas, it proved quite lucrative.
I don’t recall anyone here supporting the re-introduction of lead into gasoline or paint.
All of us like our air and water clean. All of us like our vistas.
Physics matters. Science is hard. You can clean up the environment but you pay a price. The first parts of the cleanup are easy and (relatively) inexpensive. But the further you go, the more it costs.
We’re a first-world society so we can afford more (compare to Nigeria, or Zimbabwe, or Bangladesh, correctly described by President Trump as ‘shitholes’). But even we have our limits.
We’re about there, Yellow. How do you think people will decide when it comes to some new environmental regulation that has some minuscule, marginal benefit versus their job? Ask the good people of Nigeria about that. Americans will decide the same way.
All the more serious problems California has, and you’re whining about the fact that some of us find the new coffee regulation to be foolish.
Priorities, dude.
LOL. You are such a card.
I love your world view that people are so stupid that they need guardians throughout their entire lives. I mean, do we really want to not only keep adults alive, and allow them to breed, if they do not know enough not to iron clothing while it is on their bodies or that HOT coffee from a restaurant, such as Mickey D’s is actually HOT?
Also, if coffee is REALLY dangerous to a person’s health, it should be banned, or at least heavily regulated [hand your coffee prescription to your barista when you order].
This is all simply an example of stupid people being placed in positions of authority and having to do SOMETHING to justify their phony bologna job.
Studies based on autopsies of old men, men who died in their late 90’s and even in their early 100″s, found they all had prostate cancer. The only way for men to avoid prostate cancer is to die of something else, or lose their testosterone producing equipment. Is the State of California going to ban testicles>
By the way, estrogen is a carcinogen. Why are oral contraceptives still being sold in California? Wastewater treatment plants treat bacteria, not chemicals. Water downstream of major cities are usually populated with disproportionately more female than male fish. I am shocked, shocked that this is being allowed in California.
there is apparently an endless supply of stupid in this state… too bad we can’t figure out how to generate electricity from it.
The State of Ca does not have a corner on stupid. Just look at this.
“The Wonder of the Nanny State”
“There’s a dentist’s office in Pennsylvania that will report you to Child Protective Services if they think you’re not keeping up with your appointments. I am not making this up.
Mom Trey Hoyumpa did not like the treatment she and her kids got at the Smiles 4 Keeps location in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. In a Facebook post she claims that the practice wouldn’t let her go into the patient area with her children, wouldn’t let her meet with the dentist, and diagnosed but wouldn’t treat more than one of her children on her visit. She decided not to go back. A few months letter she received this letter:
The letter says that neglecting a child’s dental care can be considered child abuse in Pennsylvania and that dental providers are required to report it to the state. It notes that the dental office has not yet reported the parent, but she should schedule an appointment to have her children seen ASAP or else.
The letter concludes: “To keep your child as healthy as possible and to avoid a report to state authorities, please call Smiles 4 Keeps immediately to schedule an appointment.” This is obviously going to be perceived as a threat.
This trend actually started under Obama, when the regime “suggested” that doctors start asking patients about gun ownership. (If your doctor asks you about gun ownership, I suggest lying.) But it is also a defining characteristic of communist regimes where neighbors are encouraged to spy on neighbors and children are encouraged to spy on parents….”
http://www.gaypatriot.net/2018/03/29/the-wonder-of-the-nanny-state/#comments
if a doctor asks you about gun ownership, ask them which hospitals they have privileges at, and what their morbidity rate is at each one, and why.
i guarantee you they will STFU and find something else to talk about.
Every business in the Golden State should post a notice at the entrance: “The State of California has determined, or soon will determine, that everything in this premises can cause cancer or otherwise harm your health.”
“Crunching the numbers, you would have to drink 64 liters of coffee a day to achieve the level of exposure the test rats experienced.”
Whew. I only drink 56 liters of coffee per day.
So, 64 liters is equivalent to roughly 268 cups. You’re at roughly 235. 33 cups of wiggle room. Just go easy on the cream and sugar. These might be more the source of the problem.
Yes, but is it sustainably-grown fair-trade organic coffee?
Don’t know about that, but in San Francisco you can have it made with un-treated sewer water.
Brewed through free-range filters made from recycled Venezuelan diapers. I’m down, my friend, woke as woke gets after 56 liters of coffee.
Don’t forget the man made creamer laced with heavy metals. Hum!
Yum! Doh…
how did testing rats work out for Thalidomide?
Nanny state? We’d not have any of this if it weren’t for scheming lawyers. All of this enriches state agents – California bar licensed Lawyer Guild Gangsters. I’d rather be kneecapped by Tony Soprano than deposed and devoured by this pack of California-hyenas. And that’s our lives in a nutshell. Knuckle under to the mob-in-business-pantsuits.
Merciless predators all. Lawyers will descend on local boutique cafe haus like biblical locust. Okay, maybe that’s the silver lining since I brew my own dath juice.
Recall your history and remember how it was said that going into the 60’s our society was so repressive. At the rate the nanny-state is encroaching on daily life even some of those on the left might long for them as the good ole’ days.
“Repressive” is just one of many lies the Communist Controlled Democrats puppets told.
It was just more of the Communists’ self-projection.
Seems we could use, in particular circles, a good dose of restraint.
“coffee makers hadn’t presented the proper grounds” Was this the judges attempt at humor?
“The state of California has determined that everything will kill you and must be labeled as such.”
“Being alive may cause cancer.”
There, that covers all bases.
Fools, all of you.
It’s the AIR.
Everyone that has ever tried breathing has died, or will do so within a few decades.
It’s the AIR I tell you. Stop breathing it!
Wait till CA finds out soylent green is people.
No, it’s not a nanny state. It’s a state of narcissists.
The latter is much more dangerous.
Someone needs to make up coffee cups with the Prop 65 warning on them and sell them through Amazon.
I wonder if we could get a judge to rule that government buildings are coffee-free zones.
Anybody who has ever had their employer in California provide coffee, and who has then developed cancer, probably has a potential lawsuit in front of them. Sue the employer.
Well to be fair, Marxism doesn’t have a warning label, and look what keeps happening. Liberals think Americans are all idiots, they are half-right.
“Marxism. If you survive the second Purge for more than 4 hours, seek immediate help from your local Death Panel”
Next time I’m in CA I’m gonna drink my deadly coffee through a plastic straw, just to watch liberal heads explode.
If only the coffee makers would quit selling coffee and all other sellers of cancer causing substances in California would quit sales to the state, imagine the utopia California could become.
Pretty sure they’d cause a revolt that would end with the Sacramento area being cleansed of liberals. Best guess is it would take less than 1 month after sales of cancer causing products for the revolt to occur. Heck, imagine California without Starbucks for two days.
And how come some upstanding liberal hasn’t sued the state to stop these cancer causing items from entering the state? We truly need a do gooder to step up to the plate and sue to halt shipments for the good of the citizenry.