Asm. Wilma Chan

Asm. Wilma Chan from Oakland is a long-time CALPIRG champion. She has introduced and won groundbreaking legislation to rein in the use of toxic chemicals and she is currently working with CALPIRG to make the pharmaceutical industry tell us the truth about the safety of their drugs.

She spoke with CALPIRG about several important consumer protection issues.

In our 20th annual report on toy safety, CALPIRG again called on toy manufacturers to phase out the use of toxic chemicals like phthalates. What has the chemical industry’s response been to your bill to phase out these chemicals?

We got a lot of opposition from industry. It was amazing—each chemical has its own lobbyist. For a long time they wouldn’t even meet with me. When they finally agreed to, they were not open to any kind of discussion; they were extremely insulting.

The whole time, the industry was never able to tell me that these products are safe; none of them has actually been able to say to me, “I can guarantee you that these toys are safe for children.”

Given the Vioxx scandal and the lack of federal action on it, where do you think consumers should look for protection?

A lot of times people tell us we should wait for the federal regulations on drug safety, on toy safety, on toxic flame retardants, but we know that we don’t have an administration in Washington that is sympathetic to these issues and stuff is just moving too slowly. So on prescription drug safety, we in California have to take the lead, just like we did on toxic flame retardants. We need to make sure that consumers in California have safe medicine.

After watching the pharmaceutical industry spend $80 million on California’s recent special election, what role do you think consumer groups like CALPIRG can play in California politics?

I think that one role is disclosure. Groups like CALPIRG disclosed who was paying for those different campaigns [during the special election]. Fair information is important so voters can make educated choices about who is behind a campaign and how much money they’re putting into it. Voters can figure that into the equation.

The other role you can play is to help make consumers’ voices heard.

For example, the pharmaceutical companies make a tremendous amount of money selling their products in California. While we need the drugs and the research, it’s important that someone is asking if drug companies’ profit margins have to be this high when a senior or a working person can’t pay for their prescriptions.

There must be better alternatives, so educating consumers, getting them to make their voices heard, is really very important.

Should Californians be concerned that our state has so much debt? Do you think the state budget has structural problems?

The California budget does have structural problems, and we need to be very concerned about them. We need to look at both spending and at revenues.

I think that when Prop. 13 was passed, we put an artificial limit on the amount of money we have to fund programs, regardless of population growth. We shouldn’t throw out Prop. 13, but we should take a look at it and see if there are ways we can improve it.

We’re also doing too much borrowing. Both this governor and the previous governor have relied too heavily on borrowing. The only way to avoid that is to have additional stable revenue sources going forward into the future.

[We] have to be more open-minded to look at ways to raise money. You can’t just lop off one option and say ‘I’m not even going to discuss it, I’m not even going to look at it.’ That’s very short-sighted from a fiscal point of view; it’s irresponsible.