Looks like rural business and handmade business owners have found a kindred spirit in Walter Olson, a lawyer at the Manhattan Institute whose opinion piece at Forbes business magazine website states his case - “Scrap The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.’
Olson makes the point that the concern is not only about handmade toys, but almost every product made for children under 12:
With few exceptions, the law covers all products intended primarily for children under 12. That includes clothing, fabric and textile goods of all kinds: hats, shoes, diapers, hair bands, sports pennants, Scouting patches, local school-logo gear and so on.
And paper goods: books, flash cards, board games, baseball cards, kits for home schoolers, party supplies and the like. And sporting equipment, outdoor gear, bikes, backpacks and telescopes. And furnishings for kids’ rooms.
And videogame cartridges and audio books. And specialized assistive and therapeutic gear used by disabled and autistic kids.
Our lawmakers may have been well-intentioned last year when they acted to address the outbreak of problems caused by lead paint in and on Chinese-made toys. But Olson says our government’s haste to take dramatic action revealed a failure on the part of our lawmakers to read the laws they vote on, or to look ahead to how these laws will be implemented. The government might have been worried about defective toys when this process started, but now we can all be worried about the defective process for creating public policy that’s been exposed.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree completely with you! As small business owners we are in a particularly bad spot with ANYTHING we make by hand. Playing card holders? Wood sounds exempt, but can you finish them with a poly coating? Can we put our handmade lotions, made for adults, in plastic bottles? Can we wrap our soaps, used by families, in plastic shrink wrap? WHO KNOWS!? We have signed several petitions and sent letters to our congressmen/women to have them repeal this law or at least make it more clear. Small businesses are going to suffer tremendously from this legislation and the big business (who shall remain nameless, but the name starts with an “M”) that caused this all walks away scott-free. We who are least able to afford the testing and compliance rules will be forced to close up shop at some point, making “M”, and others like it, the last and only ones standing!
At least this law is on hold - for now, at least!