House Bill 0261 (introduced by Chris Latvala) and Senate Bill 0176 (introduced by Jeff Brandes), which are both now in committee, would remove the biannual cosmetics product registration requirement.
Over the top
As Florida regulations stand now, they may be deterring cosmetics businesses from operating in the state. Manufacturers need to register every SKU under the existing policy, and this process includes a fee of up to $15 per product.
“While backers of the bill may get pushback from regulators, backers say the proposals will almost certainly pass if the pro-business Legislature is willing to listen to the stories of manufacturers,” believes Peter Schorsch, a political consultant as well as a respected state-based blogger and publisher, whose latest article on the bills is making the rounds online.
One such manufacturer—Fenton Baijnath, CEO of Radical Cosmetics—appealed to the Governor last summer, writing that the policy “creates a significant competitive disadvantage for Florida manufacturers, as cosmetic makers in other states do not have to comply with this law in order to sell their products into Florida,” according to Schorsch.
Beauty economy
The proposed amendments to Florida Statute 499.015 would make no changes to the registration requirements for drug and device manufacturers.
“Our bill streamlines Florida’s regulation on cosmetic manufacturers and brings the state in line with most of the country,” Brandes tells the press.
“Duplicative and unnecessary regulation drives business out of the state, and we’ve seen this happen in Pinellas County,” he adds.
“With the passage of this bill we hope to attract those jobs back to our community.” If passed, the revised statute would take effect at the start of July 2016.
Against the grain
It’s more common for states to create stricter cosmetics and personal care product regulations than to repeal such protocols.
This time last year, Maine added phthalates to its list of priority chemicals, requiring manufacturers and distributors of certain products to pay a reporting fee (meant to dissuade them from formulating products with the chemical).
And several states, including New York, New Jersey, and Illinois, passed legislation to ban or phase out microbeads ahead of the federal ban, which President Obama signed into law on December 28, 2015.