The Times ran a devastating story about the Consumer Product Safety Commission in yesterday's paper. It opens with an account of how John Gibson Mullan, a former lawyer for the All Terrain Vehicle industry who was serving as the CPSC's director of compliance, argued against banning sales of adult-sized ATV's to children under the age of sixteen. An excerpt:
Robin L. Ingle, then the agency’s hazard statistician and A.T.V. injury expert, was dumbfounded. Her months of research did not support Mr. Mullan’s analysis. Yet she would not get to offer a rebuttal.
“He had hijacked the presentation,” Ms. Ingle said in an interview. “He was distorting the numbers in order to benefit industry and defeat the petition. It was almost like he still worked for them, not us.”
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Top officials at the Consumer Product Safety Commission say they have enhanced protections for the American public in recent years. But they have also blocked enforcement actions, weakened industry oversight rules and promoted voluntary compliance over safety mandates, according to interviews with current and former senior agency officials and consumer groups and a review of commission documents.
The full article, which is definitely worth reading, can be found here.