On June 28, the California Senate Committee on Health approved the first-in-the-nation bill to ban five harmful chemicals from candy, cereals, and other processed food. Assembly Bill 418, which has already passed the state's lower house, is getting close to a vote in the Senate in the coming weeks, which would then put it on Governor Gavin Newsom's desk to be signed into law.
When Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Calif.) of California's 46th district first introduced the legislation back in February, a lot of media outlets ran headlines about how the banning of Red Dye No. 3 — an ingredient in some candies that has been prohibited from use in cosmetics since 1990 — would impact the sale of Skittles in the state. Through the hyperspeed game-of-telephone that is the internet, a lot of the discourse surrounding this bill has been flattened to, "California is trying to ban Skittles."
