A California judge ruled on Thursday that all coffee sold in the state must come with a cancer warning.
Journalists, as a class, tend to favor regulation, but journalists also tend to favor coffee even more. So, this news was met with consternation and mixed emotions. Some treated the story as “News of the Weird.” Some conservatives have chalked it up as another wacky ruling from a wacky California judge.
But this isn’t a story about a single ruling, a single judge, or a single drink. It is, rather, a lamentable tale about a state that has adopted the regulatory mindset in full, and about the absurd, corrupt, and counterproductive consequences when this mindset comes into contact with avaricious trial lawyers.
In 1986, California voters approved Proposition 65, the “Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act.”
Who could oppose a legislative idea with a name like that? Democratic politicians at the time praised Prop 65 as “more than just a ‘get tough’ law. It also is an innovative legal mechanism that charts a new path for toxics regulation, using straightforward rules and direct enforcement.”
That “innovative legal mechanism” is a Kafkaesque inversion of legal principles. It gives crafty lawyers every incentive to seek out any product with the slightest trace amounts of a chemical that can act as a carcinogen, so they can sue anyone who sells that product. At this point, the burden of proof falls on those who sell the product.
And how does this bring us to coffee? Starbucks and 7-Eleven were asked to prove that trace amounts of acrylamide, a chemical introduced into coffee during the brewing process, was not harmful to consumers. Under Prop 65, plaintiffs didn’t have to prove that coffee was a carcinogen; the defendants had to prove it wasn’t.
7-Eleven settled out of court to save the legal fees. Other coffee sellers fought. And last week, they lost.
It’s a victory for trial lawyers, who could get a massive payday. This is Prop 65 working as it was designed to work, for the benefit of a class of extortionists favored by the Democratic Party.
It is, of course, no victory for consumers. Coffee is no more a cancer risk than almost anything else that might go into a human body.
When starches are roasted to excess — such as if you cook home fries until they char — acrylamide forms. This happens with coffee beans. The International Agency for Research on Cancer calls acrylamide a “probable carcinogen,” because rodents exposed to massive amounts of the chemical develop cancer. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer does not count coffee as a possible carcinogen.
Some studies show coffee consumption correlates with lower risks of skin cancer, colon cancer, and liver cancer. So, simply on the question of cancer, setting aside the fact that coffee brings joy, there are trade-offs. But embracing trade-offs is not something the regulatory mindset allows.
The biggest trade-off may be the diluting effect of ubiquitous warning labels. California says everything causes cancer. Even sardine cans come with a Prop 65 warning now, just because the manufacturer decided that it was best to avoid a hassle. Manufacturers tend not to do that if they think the warning will actually scare customers away.
The result is that if you’re warned about potential causes of cancer everywhere, the warnings lose their strength. If everything is an emergency, nothing is. This doesn’t help anyone, except those predatory trial lawyers.
