This grew out of a conversation I had some time ago by phone with a worker at the Vermont country Store. She said she could not ship any of their licorice items to California because of Proposition 65.
Example: The Best of Vermont from The Vermont Country Store to your door!
I looked it up, and the gist is that licorice may contain higher than acceptable amounts of lead:
But here’s the rub: You can still buy quite an assortment of red and black licorice, apparently both domestic and foreign made, from Trader Joe’s and, probably, from other specialty stores. I even found it in the Barstow Station once. Hell, you can get licorice allsorts at Staples.
Is this whole thing just arbitrary?
Who the hell has time to enforce the sales and distribution of friggin’ licorice?
Why are there no warnings printed on any of the licorice containers AFAIK?
If I can buy it here in CA, why can’t they ship it here from Vermont?
All they have to do is slap a sticker on it that says “WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.”
The company in question either doesn’t feel like doing that - or they want to punish people in that state in order to try and get them to change the law.
If someone believes their product doesn’t have 1/1000 of what is considered the safe amount of a chemical on the list - they can have it tested. Or they can do what almost everyone does - and slap a label on it anyway. Many companies in CA do just that - which make the labels pretty useless. But is it fair to the companies that have complied wit the law - to allow other companies to sell their wares - without a label - implying it is safe®?
Nitpick: licorice is a flavor, not a shape for a piece of candy. Absent a cite that a confectioner is putting the licorice flavor into a red-colored candy, I’m going to assert that there is no such thing as “red licorice.”
Prop 65 has got to be one of the stupidest laws this state has got. Those signs are literally everywhere and on everything, and are therefore completely meaningless. It’s a joke.
They’ve stopped adding lead to fuel - so it has to go somewhere else instead - and that’s licorice. If you campaign for lead-free licorice, you’ll just make the lead go somewhere else.
It’s probably a marketing decision. Companies would rather forego California sales than have their product sold somewhere with an official warning that it can cause cancer and birth defects.
Thanks for the heads up. Can you tell me what is the new word for an anise-flavored candy that I can use when I want to ask for that without having the red crap pushed off on me?
I always thought that anise was source of the flavor in licorice. Having learned otherwise, I hereby modify my request to ask that someone tell me the word that was coined to refer exclusively to licorice-flavored candies (when used in the context of discussions about candy).
The following is from Title 27 of the California Code of Regulations:
If the store is located inside California, it is sufficient to simply post a sign in the store. Individual units of merchandise do not have to be labeled. I just looked at two bottles of wine of different brands purchased in California and they do not have Prop 65 warnings on them.
So Vermont Country Store could put a warning in its catalogs or on its web site. This would freak out consumers in the other 49 states that don’t realize that Prop 65 is a joke. I suppose they could also pop up a warning if you attempted to ship a covered product to California (obviously, that would only work for internet sales). They have obviously chosen not to deal with it at all.
I love black licorice, but can’t we have an unleaded version? I’m no fan of nanny-statism and unnecessary food restrictions, nor concerned about lead in household items, but I think California may be onto something here with not permitting it in food.