Manufacturers should be held accountable for their products’ health effects
Bill 12 has corporations reeling over the idea of taking responsibility for their profit seeking byproducts
B.C.'s Bill 12 is taking aim at companies who actively promote products that hurt people's health. (Pexels/Anna Shvets)
The B.C. government took a potentially massive measure against the opioid crisis and other ongoing societal ills last month.
The tabled Bill 12, Public Health Accountability and Cost Recovery Act, allows the province to recover public health harms costs related to “the promotion, marketing and distribution of products that are harmful to adults and children in British Columbia,” reads a B.C. government news release.
The idea behind Bill 12 is to make it easier to hold companies accountable for the health effects caused by their products. For example, cigarette companies for their addictive cancer-inducing wares, opioid makers for the practices that have led to the ongoing toxic drugs crisis, and social media websites for the plethora of issues that arise from their platforms.
Businesses in B.C. are already raising concerns over the broad language of the bill, saying it could lead to a slippery slope of every conceivable commercial product being liable for litigation. They have conceived a world where grocery stores will be made to literally pay for the healthcare costs of people who become ill from consuming products sold.
Perhaps a fair point is to be made about the language. Vagueness and broadly defined terminology rarely makes for sound legislation that can face court challenges, which is likely to occur should Bill 12 gain royal assent. The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, BC Hotel Association, Wines of British Columbia, BC Chamber of Commerce among others have signed an open letter stating the language is too broad.
However, let us take a step back and understand where all of this is coming from. Corporations have been intentionally using strategies that make their products widespread to consumers. Smokers have a hard time quitting because of the additives in addition to nicotine. Social media allows fake news to run amok while stimulating our dopamine centres. Opioid producers’ sales of their medications to pharmacies and hospitals has increased over 3,000 per cent since the early 1980s, leading to an increase in misuses and non-medical consumptions which fuel the current crisis.
With the facts comes a conclusion that has been made a thousand times over and rediscovered another thousand times because of how quickly the lesson seems to be forgotten. Corporations want us to buy their stuff and will take unethical and harmful measures to do so.
It’s a matter of fighting the proverbial fire at the source instead of dousing everything with water and hoping that suffocates the flames. Many groups will frame this issue as if your local grocery store can get sued because the trans fat, sugar, or sodium levels in this-or-that food item was enough to aggravate a new or pre-existing health condition.
The reactions resort to the old “personal responsibility” claim to health. It is true that individuals limiting their intake of addictive substances or stimulants is an important part of harm prevention, but it’s also one that is entirely negated if addictiveness is so thoroughly baked into the product’s design that personal limitation cannot stand as the sole line of defence.
Fundamentally, there is a recognition that profit-maximizing behaviours of various companies correlates with business strategies that, intentionally or incidentally, cause long-term health impacts in consumers. Putting aside the issue of Bill 12’s language, which will likely be re-adjusted through the legislative process, is an avenue for consumer protection that is definitely needed in a day and age where protections appear to be on the backfoot.
