Once a wild west, California is now a land of bans
Outlawing things seems to come easily to Californians.
Ferrets, nunchucks, beach bonfires, mule meat, free toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals, perfume that bothers librarians: Prohibitions in the Golden State are at times pioneering, at others puzzling.
An analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute found that California placed more restrictions on personal and economic freedom than every state but New York.
“California is crazy obsessive,” said Zoltan Istvan, who is running for California governor on the Libertarian ticket. “The vast majority of the stuff just needs to be left alone.”
This year, Los Angeles barred demonstrators from carrying tiki torches and “signs that are not made out of soft material”; Laguna Beach banned smoking pretty much everywhere within city limits; and state lawmakers barred pet stores from selling non-rescue dogs, cats and rabbits.
Robb Korinke, principal of Grassroots Lab, a California firm that tracks local government policy, said California has viewed itself as a trailblazer for policies that spread to the rest of the country.
“Certainly the sort of environmental issues around product bans, that is something that California has embraced,” he said.
Interest groups, he added, have grown increasingly sophisticated with campaigns that target individual cities and counties in a sort of domino strategy to gain broader backing.
By the time California voters approved a statewide ban on plastic bags last year, more than 150 California jurisdictions already had bans on the books.
On personal issues such as gay marriage and pot use, California has been among the freer states, according to the Cato Institute study.
Even so, after the popular vote last year to end marijuana prohibition, cities and counties retained the power to ban recreational sales within their borders — and many have chosen to do so.
This article is from the California Sun, a newsletter that delivers California’s most compelling news to your inbox each morning — for free. Sign up here.
