California Democrats know to strike when the anti-science iron is hot, so hot on the heels of banning red dye No. 3, using nothing but the same suspect epidemiology that turned the state into a laughing stock with Prop 65 'may cause cancer' warnings on 65,000 products, they are going after red dye 40.

Think of all the lives being saved by all those bans. There must have been corpses lining the streets!

Well, no. Food coloring has never killed anyone, it is instead a victim of the kind of bad statistical manipulation that also links pickle juice and aloe vera to cancer. If it shows up in giant rows and columns of data enough to be "statistically significant" - 34 percent likely to be completely wrong - and then epidemiologists rush to publish it so they can get into the New York Times and display that proudly at government grant renewal time.


'The people' of California think you should do something about the hobos you recruited to the state defecating on the streets, or do something about the criminal gangs driving retail stores out of business because you declared theft isn't a crime if each criminal takes under $1000, or do something about driving home insurance companies out of the state because you won't allow responsible fire management, or the nation's highest utility costs because you mandated solar energy. Instead, you froot loops are banning Froot Loops.

 The papers they are using to ban these products are pure garbage; a meta-analysis of hand-picked papers and even then they only found a weak association under a giant umbrella of behaviors that encompass 'hyperactive' in 52 percent of the papers. Even California shouldn't ban products on a coin flip.

The problem is that without any science, it does nothing to inform public health. This new ban, and then bans on yellow dye No. 5 and 6, blue dye No. 1 and 2, and green dye No. 3, will save no one.

They will instead be sold to consumers as "preventing ADHD", a spectrum so broad that 85 percent of American children can be diagnosed with it if they have the kind of parents that inhabit the California coast.

There is generally not much to do about California in most cases. While the Governor has racked up an illegal $73 billion deficit and an insurance crisis, a housing affordability crisis, record-setting crime and homelessness, unreal wildfire risks and the nation's highest utility and gasoline costs, he is spending money campaigning nationwide about abortion because one other state has abortion standards the same as the country of France.

Yet if you are not wealthy, it has a huge impact because he can force companies to make changes to obey any new mandate against science he likes - and every other abandons the state, leaving the market to predatory insiders. Residents of the state already pay double for light bulbs because companies that refuse to comply create a price control because they are forced out. They can't even buy them on Amazon. The same with ridiculous Prop 65 warning labels that force overseas companies from selling in the state.

When Democrats decided to ban red dye No. 3 they had to endure criticism they wanted to ban Skittles, and they sent journalists out to assure the public that was just a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, but by banning red dye 40 they are literally banning Skittles. And Froot Loops. And Doritos. Jell-0. Orange Crush.

Democrats say the ban will only apply to food in schools - 'it's for the kids!' - but this is the same party that claimed Prop 65 would never be abused by the trial lawyers who lobbied to have it turned into law. Anyone with critical thinking should know better than to trust anti-science activists and ask their Representative to vote against A.B. 2316 - even if you are a Democrat.