Prop 65 should be amended to set a minimum bar for meaningfully cancerous things, otherwise, all things are labelled cancerous and the warning has no meaning.
Pretty much the only way to get a proposition onto the ballot is through concerted and expensive political activity by special interests.
So the proposition that we vote on, which gets passed by 50% + 1 vote, is often extremely confusing and there is no room for debate on whether it was well crafted law, and no easy way to modify when bugs in the law are discovered.
That's not entirely true. The norm is that amending either an initiative statute or a constitutional amendment requires a further referendum. However, in the case of initiative statutes, it is possible for the text of the initiative statute to grant the Legislature the power to amend the statute without a further referendum. Indeed, if you look at the text of 1986's Proposition 65, section 7 provides the California Legislature the right to amend the proposition without a further referendum, provided that (a) the amendment furthers the purpose of the proposition (as given in section 1) and (b) the amendment is passed by a two-thirds vote in each house. (It also requires the Governor's signature, but a two-thirds vote is a veto-proof majority anyway.) And, in actual fact, the California Legislature has used this power at least once, in 2003, to amend the Proposition 65 text without further public vote.
(If there was any controversy about whether an amendment, passed by two-thirds vote in each house, met the requirement to "further the purpose" of Proposition 65, that would be a matter for the Supreme Court of California to determine.)
And the cases where a proposition can be meaningfully changed or adjusted by the legislature is vanishingly small.
California Constitution, Article II section 10(c) says "The Legislature may amend or repeal a referendum statute. The Legislature may amend or repeal an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors unless the initiative statute permits amendment or repeal without the electors’ approval" [1]
So California's constitution is very clear, the Legislature can amend and repeal initiative statutes (of which 1986 Proposition 65 was one). The only question is whether the Legislature's amending/repealing legislation needs approval by the voters at the next election to become effective, and that question is determined by the text of the initiative statute itself. 1986 Proposition 65 imposes a two-thirds majority requirement and a requirement that the amendment further the same purposes in order to skip another public vote; other initiative statutes have different requirements, yet others require another vote for all amendments.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
Personally I've noticed that I tend to look past the items with labels. I don't like to buy them. So the the labels seem to do something, at least as a data point.
In that case, does the labeled item situation protect me from cancer more than the no-label same-items I see in another state? I have to wonder...Personally I think I'd rather know. Maybe the label sizing can be made adjustable based on contents, but it's not a terrible start vs. no warning at all.
Anything will "cause cancer" if your idea of causality is an observation of cancer in a small-N, high dose uncontrolled study in inbred rodents. Prop 65 doesn't bother to incorporate basic toxicology - dose and exposure need not be considered.
If you drink coffee, you should know that has acrylamide in it. If you regularly consume 100,000x the dose from a cup of coffee, then you'll be at risk of developing cancer. But, your coffee shop needs to display a Prop 65 warning because CA's legislative warriors encouraging the toxicological equivalent of denying evolution; denying that the dose makes the poison.
Is this a specific study? If so please link it so we can get on the same page. I think specifics ought to help in a discussion of this sort, in which swings between polarities like "overblown warnings" and "no warnings whatsoever" are a risk. Either polar end seems to come with big downsides.
Regarding coffee, what I'm reading is:
- A judge in LA required a warning
- The state regulators stepped in and made a clear exemption for coffee after this requirement by the judge
- No coffee warning is required now
Not so?
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-coffee-cancer-warning...
Also to say which component is carcinogenic so people can make semi-educated decisions.
Those generic "California says we have to say that something this might be bad, mkay?" stickers undermine the health warning for some seriously nasty chemicals.
I've also seen real safety information covered and obscured by generic prop65 stickers, which is even worse.
Some very specific viruses are carcinogenic; not all viruses are. Similarly, some very specific molecules are carcinogenic, but not every substance is carcinogenic in sufficient quantities. An obvious counterexample is water, which is toxic in large amounts but not carcinogenic.