California Proposition 65 Should Be Repealed

Thanks for accepting, this will be a fun and productive debate!I'm a high school debater. This summer, I attended a several week long camp at UCLA dedicated to debate (specifically, LD). I had never been to California before. For all I was concerned, people did a lot of pot there and apparently were all gay in San Francisco - second-hand information from Texas is evidently not that reliable, but whatever. I arrived in LAX two days before camp was supposed to start. Given that I had nothing else to do, I decided to do all the tourist-y things in LA. I went to Groaman's Chinese Theater (I'm not going to attempt to spell that correctly), Venice Beach, etc etc. I also visited the Universal Studios amusement park. It was there that I first encountered this puzzling sign. Upon ordering an overpriced burger with heart stopping amounts of butter, bacon and salt, I looked behind the cash register and noticed this sign:WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.There was a picture of a crying baby or something along those lines on it, if I recall correctly. Quaint. Puzzled as to why that was up there in the first place, I asked the cashier (who happened to be the manager) why it was there. "Yeah, it's state law. They came up to me, and I was like, 'You want me to put that sign in my resteraunt? Um, no.' But they told me it was like the law so I had to do it."I then ate my Type II Diabetes on a bun and hoped my baby wouldn't grow a third arm. I'm neither female nor pregnant, so this fear was dispelled with relative ease. Either way, though, I wondered why the California Legislature would create a law like that. On further investigation, I found that it was put in place via a direct vote by the populace of California. 80s California, what was wrong with you? Repeal CA Proposition 65 The text of the Proposition and the law today (called 'The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986') stipulates that 65 ought to have been passed because of a need:(a) To protect themselves and the water they drink against chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.(b) To be informed about exposures to chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.(c) To secure strict enforcement of the laws controlling hazardous chemicals and deter actions that threaten public health and safety.(d) To shift the cost of hazardous waste cleanups more onto offenders and less onto law-abiding citizens. The people hereby enact the provisions of this initiative in furtherance of their rights.The enforcement of the law includes a regulatory list of over 770 chemicals that can allegedly cause cancer and warrant the sign mentioned above in a restaurant. Without a visible sign, the business can be fined up to $2,500 a day. My 2 arguments for the repeal of Prop 65 are below.1. Bureaucratic AbuseProposition 65 ensures that any person may sue a business should there be no sign in the lobby, even if no harm has occurred. This means that private bounty hunters can simply roam cities in order to find businesses in violation. This hurts businesses, especialy smaller ones: the thousands spent in fines can only be outdone by those in legal fees. Scott Tips, the President and General Counsel of the National Health Federation, stated [1], ... one growth industry spawned by Prop 65 consists of numerous private law firms dedicated to shooting first and asking questions later in a "no prisoners taken" attempt to earn huge legal fees while doing a bare-minimum of public good. The State and County governments may also bring legal action, but often it is these vulture firms that are first out of the gate to win the jackpot. Proposition 65's immense list of chemicals ensures that tehre will always be small businesses violating some form of the law. As Tips pointed out, vulture firms can pick off these businesses, harming the already unstable California economy even more. The massive list of chemicals brings me to my next argument...2. Scientifically QuestionableIt is an indisputable fact that any edible substance consumed in excess will kill you. Be it sodium, sugars, or fats (all necessary for human life), eating enough will kill you. Proposition 65 should be repealed becuase it takes a very non-scientific approach to classifying chemicals (or other substaces) on the controlled list.One of my favorite substances on the list if "wood dust" [2]. Literally, the dust of wood. As justification, the OHHEA cited a single study by the IARC (http://www.iarc.fr...) from 1995. To quote from said study [3] : A number of case-control studies on nasopharyngeal cancer have reported an association with employment in wood-related occupations; however, confounding was not ruled out from these studies, and the largest study, from Denmark, in which exposure to wood dust was estimated, did not confirm the association. Case-control studies of laryngeal cancer consistently showed an association with exposure to wood dust or woodworking; however, cohort studies of woodworkers gave consistently negative results. Overall, these studies provide suggestive but inconclusive evidence for a causal role of occupational exposure to wood dust in cancers of the nasopharynx. Even with inconclusize evidence, the OHHEA will ban the substance on the spot. Yes, wood dust is gross. No, it probably doesn't cause cancer. I may be able to buy that wood dust causes cancer anyways. But, let's be honest, if the food I ate was tasty and had wood dust in it, I'd probably eat it anyways. Unfortunately, not all documentation of alleged cancer causing substances is as strong, if you could call a single study that. For instance, a quote from the OHHEA papers justifying the banning of substances revealed [4]: Progestins: In 1987, the IARC published Supplement 7 of its series, IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. Here, the IARC concluded that progestins are “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B). Therefore, these substances meet the requirements of Labor Code section 6382(d). These same descriptions were used for several other chemicals, such as Styrene, Amsacrine, and Bleonycines. Possibly carcinogenic means that there is conflicting evidence on the claim and much room for study. "Possibility" is not sufficient scientific grounds to make an action. Fun fact: The OHHEA also lists Progesterone as dangerous [5].ConclusionProp 65 should be repealed; no reform can take Prop 65's problems away without changing its basic spirit. Is it bad to have, for instance, Wood dust in a burger? Maybe. But forcing a restaurant to put wood dust on the same plane as, say, arsenic could hurt business. Even if it doesn't, the law is a bureaucratic disaster that costs money to enforce and can harm small business =es with arbitrary prosecutions. [1]http://www.thenhf.com... ((Tips received his JD at the Berkeley School of Law. The NHF describes itself: "the National Health Federation is an international nonprofit, consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals' rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements, and use alternative therapies without government restriction"))[2] http://www.caslab.com...[3]http://monographs.iarc.fr... [4] http://www.oehha.ca.gov...[5] http://www.caslab.com...