As you know, I have been blogging the past few days in my capacity as the leader of IBN about the Colorado Safe Personal Care Products Act. Below is the text of a draft template you can use to send a letter to the Colorado legislature voicing your opposition to the Colorado Safe Personal Care Products Act. If you have not been following the updates, check this post (with video) and this one (introductory overview).
Note that the letter can be customized to your liking. Insert your name and contact information and, to make it as profesional as possible, please use your letterhead. You can switch the paragraphs around to make it your own. You can also edit them or even delete anything with which you do not agree.
The sponsors of this legislation are Representative Diane Primavera and Senator Betty Boyd.
DIANNE PRIMAVERA: Colorado State Representative, District 33 // phone: 303-866-4667 // dianne.primavera.house@state.co.us // Fax: 303-866-2218
BETTY BOYD President Pro Tempore: Colorado State Senator, District 21 // Phone: 303-866-4857 // betty.boyd.senate@state.co.us /// Fax: 303-866-4543
Please be sure to send your correspondence to them at a minimum. Contact information for other Colorado lawmakers is listed here. I do not have fax numbers, but you can send the letter via email. If I get fax numbers, I will post them and share them as we go here at the blog and on Twitter. Please do not hesitate to call their offices as well, at the numbers listed. You will likely get a voice mail. Leave a message! Let's let them know our views.
Question: Are you sending a letter to the Colorado legislature? If so, please leave a comment to that effect in the comments section so we can see all of the people joining forces to address this important issue!
LETTER TEMPLATE
LETTERHEAD: with name, company name, address, phone number, email address. It is important that all of this identifying information be included.
[DATE]
Colorado State Capitol
200 East Colfax Avenue
Denver, CO 80203-1776
To Whom It May Concern (or preferably, lawmaker’s name]:
I wish to take this opportunity to share my position with respect to the Colorado Safe Personal Care Products Act, House Bill 10-1248.
My company is a small manufacturer of cosmetics in [CITY, STATE]. While I applaud Colorado lawmakers for seeking to take steps to promote safe cosmetics, I am convinced that HB-1248 is not the best way to accomplish that goal. If this law is passed, it will put me and other small Colorado cosmetics manufacturers out of business without doing anything to help Colorado consumers or create a safer environment for them. Here are my main concerns.
• HB 10-1248 may put me out of business.
My business is very small. I am already struggling to stay above water in this poor economy, but I continue to dedicate resources to ensure the safety of the products I manufacture and sell. Why would Colorado create a needless, burdensome and hostile regulatory environment that would force me to close down? I am not a big business. I can’t just move somewhere else. If this law passes, not only will it confuse both me and my customers, but it would force me to sell all of my products to consumers in other states, and I cannot afford to do that. This law would result not only in loss of revenue to me, but loss of the personal satisfaction of serving people in my home state.
If this law passes, I will go out of business while my customers experience no new benefits. They are no safer today than they will be the day after this law goes into effect. If this law passes, I would be faced with raising my prices to cover the increased cost of selling products to Colorado consumers. I would have to hire attorneys that I cannot afford in order to keep up with the law. I would have to constantly monitor a list of substances, wherever that is going to be maintained, and I would probably be faced with reformulating my products over and over again in order to keep up with changing “authoritative groups” and their studies. I cannot run a business that way.
My business is one of multiple thousands across the state of Colorado that form the very backbone of this state’s economy. If this law passes, I will lose, my customers will lose and Colorado consumers will lose.
• HB10-1248 does not consider pending federal legislation.
The FDA already regulates cosmetics, and has for many years. In fact, under the FDA’s regulatory structure, cosmetics have become among the safest types of products manufactured and sold in the nation. In 2008, the House Energy & Commerce Committee circulated a draft of the FDA Globalization Act of 2008. After some revision, it was introduced last year as the FDA Globalization Act of 2009. If passed, it will completely overhaul the cosmetics laws that I have to follow.
Why burden small Colorado businesses with a requirement to comply with new federal laws and new states laws, particularly when the goals of both lawmaking bodies are exactly the same – to promote safe cosmetics? Rather than impose potentially conflicting laws of its own, and open the floodgates for a patchwork quilt of state laws that will make it impossible to sell cosmetics to consumers in the state of Colorado, you should work with federal lawmakers to implement new federal laws that would accomplish the same goals in a more efficient and cost effective manner.
• HB 10-1248 is vague and confusing.
HB 10-1248 seeks to impose new legal liability on cosmetics companies based on the idea that if a single one of thousands of agencies or “formally organized programs or groups recognized as authoritative” concludes that a substance “causes cancer or reproductive toxicity,” my company can be sued and damages can be recovered, even if no damage occurs. There are several problems here.
(1) Who is going to determine what “formally organized programs” qualify to submit data? What kind of studies do they have to submit? How will we know that we can rely on the data as scientifically sound and unbiased?
(2) Who defines “cancer” and “reproductive toxicity?” How much evidence of either is required to invoke the statute?
(3) How can we remove any and everything that’s potentially “toxic” from a product? Certain types of natural alcohols are used in perfumes, yet they are also toxic if not used properly. Coffee is used in cosmetics, yet it is toxic in large and inappropriate quantities.
Even water can be deadly and toxic, and it also contains several substances which if used inappropriately, can cause injury. The very air we breathe can kill us! Is this bill designed to create a bubble around Colorado? That is not a reasonable goal and the bill is raises multiple issues along these lines because it is vague and confusing.
I do not see where this bill is drawing on best manufacturing processes or evidence-based scientific documentation. Rather, it is drawing on anecdotal opinions. Since the law does not allow me to claim consumer benefit from my product based on anecdotal opinion, I am puzzled as to why Colorado would consider banning ingredients or products based on anecdotal opinion.
In summary, HB-1248 would needlessly burden my business without producing any corresponding benefit for Colorado consumers It is “do nothing; feel-good” legislation that will punish me for working hard to provide for myself and my family during this nation’s, and Colorado’s, worse economic period is decades.
I hope that Colorado will reconsider this confusing, burdensome and anti-small Colorado business law. Thank you for the opportunity to share my views.
[SIGNED: Your name Company name]
