Finally, Toddlers Get Access To Date Rape Drugs And Lead

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It is a great time to be a kid. When I was young, my parents didn’t buy me date rape drugs as a present for Christmas, which means I couldn’t fall into a coma and wake up with no memory of what happened. Life sucked like that. We did have lead, but it was mostly in paint, not in toys, backpacks and dishes. Now lead is blowing up big time and it’s everywhere.

Yesterday we learned that a popular toy named Aqua Dots contains little beads that, if ingested, turn into “hydroxy butyrate,” a date rape drug.

Scientists say a chemical coating on the beads, when ingested, metabolizes into the so-called date rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate. When eaten, the compound — made from common and easily available ingredients — can induce unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death.

It’s called teaching kids how to party young.

The toy is also very popular in Australia, where it is called “Bindeez,” because they are weird. It was named toy of the year at some Australian toy function. But they also like the boomerang, so whatever.

The two U.S. children who swallowed Aqua Dot beads went into nonresponsive comas. A 20-month-old has recovered completely while the other child, whose age was not known, has been released from a hospital after five days and is recovering, he said.

Aqua Dots is a very hot toy for Christmas. I think China’s plan is to kill us with shoddy products, so obviously we should bomb them.

Meanwhile, a separate recall was announced for 405,000 children's products made in China, most of them toy cars, because of dangerous levels of lead.

Exactly when does this end? Are the Chinese going to spray cyanide on lollipops?

The recalled products include:

Duck Family Collectable Wind-Up Toy, Dizzy Ducks Music Box, "Robot 2000" collectable tin robot and Winnie-the-Pooh Spinning Top and "Big Red"

Great, I've been rubbing "Big Red" on my balls daily for about a year. Lead is especially harmful to young children and can cause brain damage. Brains are sort of important. Putting lead paint on the surface of toys that kids love to shove in their mouth and up their anuses is a pretty bad idea. Last year Mattel recalled 21 million Chinese toys.

Now Consumer Reports is recommending people immediately stop using a variety of products.

Our lab tests detected lead at widely varying levels in samples of dishware, jewelry, glue stick caps, vinyl backpacks, children's ceramic tea sets and other toys and items not on any federal recall list.

Some of the items Consumer Reports listed have not even been included in recalls.

Consumers Union said some of the products it tested included a Fisher-Price blood pressure cuff from a toy medical kit, caps from seven Elmer's Glue Sticks and some duck-shaped backpacks.

The caps were on glue sticks decorated with cartoon characters and were all orange colored.

Huh, I wonder if any caps didn’t end up in a kid’s mouth?

Consumer Reports used lead testing kits that people can buy for home use. After a positive result, they did more testing in a lab. It’s obviously great to have a private business telling us which products we should avoid, but wouldn’t it be even better if our government stopped these products before they reached little Timmy and he sucked on them for 2 years, turning him into a moron? If only we had an agency called the Consumer Product Safety Commission, none of this would happen, right? Well, not in our “Business get to do whatever it wants" world.

The chief of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and her predecessor have taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children's furniture industries and others they regulate, according to internal records obtained by The Washington Post. Some of the trips were sponsored by lobbying groups and lawyers representing the makers of products linked to consumer hazards.

Mmm, smell that? It’s the Ron Paul no government world. Ask that baby how it feels about no regulation after it wakes up from its coma. The CPSC has chosen a brilliant path of allowing businesses to impose “voluntary” standards and not to take legal action against companies that refuse to recall dangerous products. They work for you!

Bush’s choices to lead the CPSC have been, as expected, business folk. Current director Nord was a corporate lawyer for Kodak and previous director Stratton created a foundation, which advocates limited government and supports free-market economic principles. Yay! Ron Paul 08!

Not surprisingly, the CPSC is now blatantly disregarding governmental regulations. But, hey, what agency under Bush isn't?

Government-wide travel regulations state that officials from agencies such as the CPSC should not accept money for travel from nonfederal sources if the payments "would cause a reasonable person . . . to question the integrity of agency programs or operations."

And make no mistake about it, this is something we can lay at the feet of our terrible president. Under Clinton, the chairman of the CPSC only traveled at the expense of the agency or a media organization that wanted the chairman there to announce a recall.

The great thing about CPSC is that under Bush the agency seems to have taken a new role: Actually helping businesses to harm people.

The records also detail several trips that were paid for by lawyers who represent manufacturers in product liability lawsuits.

Nord accepted more than $2,000 in travel and accommodations from the Defense Research Institute to attend its meeting in New Orleans on "product litigation trends," according to her report. The institute is made up of more than 20,000 corporate defense lawyers. In 2004, Stratton attended the group's meeting in Barcelona, at a cost to the group of $915 for his hotel room.

The guys who worked under Clinton were a bit shocked.

Gilbert, the former CPSC executive director, called DRI's contribution toward Stratton's hotel bill in Spain "amazing."

But don’t worry, George Bush is going to protect us.

President George W. Bush on Tuesday proposed tougher inspection rules meant to keep dangerous food and other products out of the United States and said he wants broader power to recall food that is unsafe for U.S. consumers.

Maybe you shouldn’t put the people who spent their careers working for corporations in charge of agencies who fight for consumers against corporations, you fucking asshole.

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