- Welcome to America,
the freest country in the entire world,
which we know is true because it's a thing that people say
and you might actually believe that
until you try to build housing somewhere
or drink alcohol in public.
But unfortunately,
America is not the freest country in the world.
In fact, according to some,
it's barely in the top 20 freest countries.
But the world is a diverse place and one country's freedom
is another country's criminal violation.
And there are wide swaths of activities
that are perfectly normal in other countries,
but also very, very illegal in America.
So today,
let's look at some international liberties
that could get you fine or locked up
if you tried them stateside.
And some of these foreign freedoms may surprise you.
But let's start with a truly evil and dastardly product,
one that actually specifically targets children.
I'm of course talking about Kinder Eggs.
Now, we like to say that children are the future,
and here in America,
the moment we find out that something
puts children in danger,
legislators pull out all the stops to ensure
that we try to keep our kids safe.
And that's why America has stood firm
to cracking down on a grave and terrible threat
to children's health and safety posed
by toy filled chocolate eggs.
Kinder Surprise Eggs,
which famously contain a yellow capsule,
which contains a small toy,
have been a beloved staple for children around the world
ever since the product's introduction in 1974
by Ferrero, the Italian company.
But in the United States,
these toy filled treats have been classified as dangerous
illegal contraband.
And some background.
In 1938,
the US passed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act,
which empowered government agencies to regulate food safety,
and under consumer safety regulations issued
by the FDA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission,
the sale and distribution of any food
with a quote "non-nutritive object embedded" is prohibited,
and that includes toys found inside confectionary items.
Now, although you can find Kinder Surprise Eggs
in Canada and Mexico,
don't try to bring them into this country
or you risk serious fines.
In 2011, the US Customs and Border Protection, the CBP,
seized more than 60,000 Kinder Eggs from travelers'
baggage and international mail shipments,
more than twice that number from 2010.
This caused the CBP to issue a press release in 2012
warning people to try to stop sneaking
chocolate eggs into the country.
Quote, "Also known as Kinder Eggs,
these chocolate treats may be cute and seasonal,
but they are too dangerous to children
to be imported legally into the US,
The problem is the small plastic toy
inside the Kinder Egg.
While sold in many countries,
this product is banned from the US
because young children can choke on it."
Now, some people have argued
that these Kinder Eggs are not a risk
to European children and Canadian children because European
and Canadian children are smarter than US children.
(man giggling)
Now, a few months after the CBP released that statement,
a married couple from Seattle was
detained at the Canadian border when the pair was caught
with six Kinder Eggs from Vancouver.
The couple was unaware that they were in possession
of illegal ovarian contraband and was even more shocked
that each egg carried a penalty of $2,500 per egg.
Now, luckily for that couple,
they were let off with a warning,
but not to worry American Kinder fans because in 2018,
Ferrero introduced a modified Kinder Joy Egg
that complies with US regulations.
Crucially,
the Kinder Joy is not actually an egg-shaped chocolate.
It's half a chocolate egg with wafer bits inside
while the toy is kept on the other side of the egg,
away from the edible bit,
which I guess is suitable for hapless American children.
And despite the fear surrounding Kinder Eggs,
there's little evidence that these
chocolate delights are as dangerous as claimed.
Now, there have been seven reported child deaths
between 1989 and 2016,
a relatively tiny number in the face
of billions of eggs sold.
And furthermore, the packaging warns parents
that the eggs are not suitable for kids under the age
of three and supervision is recommended.
But let's not leave food-based illegality because
while Americans remain deeply divided
on a wide variety of issues,
there's one thing that most of us can agree on
and that's that life begins at cheese.
Now, over the last 40 years, our love of cheese,
much like our waistbands, has grown.
Between 1977 and 2020,
we Americans have increased our annual cheese consumption
from 16 pounds to 40 pounds every year.
And I'm probably responsible for about half of that.
So needless to say, we Americans love our cheese,
whether it's on pizza, burgers,
or in the form of 64 Jesus-infused
slices of American cheese.
- Have you been up all night eating cheese?
- I think I'm blind.
- But if you are taking a cheese tour of the world,
be careful what you bring back to the United States
because your love of cheese might just
put you in legal jeopardy.
- You guys enjoying that cheese?
It's unpasteurized.
It's illegal in this country.
- In fact, many raw, soft cheeses from France
like bleu de gex, roquefort,
or reblochon are illegal in the United States
due to the FDA's strict cheese production regulations.
Under these rules,
cheeses made with raw unpasteurized milk
is illegal to import or sell in the United States
unless it has been aged for at least 60 days.
The reasoning is, of course, food safety,
namely to minimize the risk of foodborne
contagions like listeria, salmonella, and E. coli.
And after 60 days,
the acids and salts in raw milk cheese
coupled with the aging process begin to naturally
kill these types of harmful bacteria.
But here's the thing,
anyone who has ever been to France
knows that the cheese is so, so much better there.
And it's not just raw cheese.
The FDA has also cracked down on certain cheeses just
because they contain too many live insects.
That's the case with casu martzu,
a traditional Sardinian sheeps milk cheese
that's intentionally infested with live maggots.
Casu martzu, which literally means rotten cheese,
gets its special flavor from being left to rot out
among swarms of fly larvae.
And while I'm told this hellish looking cheese
is actually quite delicious,
it turns out that eating maggots
is actually a tremendous health risk,
earning the cheese the nickname
the world's most dangerous cheese.
And as a result, casu martzu is not only illegal in the US,
but in the entire European Union.
But here's the thing,
anyone who has ever been to Sardinia knows the maggot
filled cheese is just so much better there,
but the friendship also have been on the receiving end
of big government's anti bug eating crusade.
In 2013, the FDA angered American cheesephiles
by blocking the import of French mimolette cheese
just because the cheese is
naturally infested with cheese mites.
And while most cheese makers consider the mites a nuisance,
mimolette producers actually encourage
the microscopic critters to burrow
into the rind in order to help the cheese ripen
and produce its distinctively sweet, earthy flavor.
(man humming)
Mitey.
But the FDA has determined that eating too
many mites could cause an allergic reaction,
resulting in the ban of the gouda-like cheese.
And though the FDA has no legal limit on cheese mites,
the agency indicated target of no more than
six mites per square inch,
which mimolette simply cannot meet.
So, what are the consequences of contraband cheese?
- We got a tip about some food
entering the country illegally.
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- Well, the failure to declare food products
on your customs forms can result in fines of up to $10,000
and your unlawful cheese will be seized, but be forewarned.
There is a thriving black market
for cheese in the United States
and illegal cheese is very much on the government's radar.
The Department of Homeland Security, you know,
the post 9/11 agency responsible
for protecting the country from terrorism and Kinder Eggs,
has helped to bust cheese smuggling rings into Canada,
but unless you're a large scale cheese smuggler,
you're probably not looking at any jail time.
- Wow.
You got me.
Good one, making me think I was gonna, like,
die in federal prison.
Ah, that's super funny.
You scamps.
- So worst case scenario,
you're probably looking at a fine
and suffering the on way of eating your dry,
cheeseless crackers alone.
But let's leave the food world and get
into something that probably makes a little bit more sense.
Now, a source of pride for the baby boomer generation is
that everything was dangerous and no one seemed to care.
Yes, that golden era where we lined our walls
with cancerous asbestos,
medical professionals smoked in hospitals,
and people sold chemistry sets
to children that contained real uranium.
So of course, as a society,
we used to let kids hurl giant darts
into the air with impunity and call it a national pastime.
That's the story of lawn darts,
which have been illegal in the United States since 1988
after being linked to thousands of injuries
and the deaths of at least three children.
Lawn darts, known as javelin darts or jarts,
was a popular lawn game in the mid 20th century.
The gameplay was actually quite straightforward.
Players would take turns tossing giant darts
into a circle placed about 35 feet away, call it corn hole,
but with giant razor sharp darts raining down
from the sky instead of soft bean bags.
Now, unfortunately,
throwing a giant metal dart is a tremendous safety hazard
and government regulators eventually began to take notice.
- This isn't child's play according
to the Food and Drug administration.
- The US's first attempt to outlaw the game
was strenuously posed by jart manufacturers
who fought the proposed FDA ban in court.
In 1970, manufacturers actually won a compromise
that would allow the sale of lawn darts
so long as it was, one, only marketed to adults,
then two, the product was no longer sold in toy stores,
and three, the product contained warning labels
alerting consumers to keep it out of the reach of children.
But unfortunately, these compromised measures
were insufficient to prevent tragedy
for aerospace engineer David Snow.
In April 1987,
Snow's seven year old daughter, Michelle,
was killed by a lawn dart thrown by one
of her nine year old brother's playmates
in the backyard of their home in Riverside, California.
The dart hit her head with approximately 23,000 pounds
of pressure per square inch
and Snow's daughter died three days later.
The grieving father then made it his mission to
lobby public officials to take lawn darts
off the market for good.
Snow brought his complaint to the
Consumer Product Safety Commission who
were persuaded to investigate Snow's claims.
The Commission discovered that over a period of eight years,
lawn darts had sent 6,100 people to the emergency room,
81% of those cases involved kids aged 15 or younger,
half were 10 or younger,
and many had suffered permanent injury disability
or even death.
In 1988, Snow prevailed in his crusade.
The Commission voted two to one to prohibit
the sale of all lawn darts and had them removed from stores
in time for that year's Christmas.
And Canada also outlawed lawn darts in July of 1989.
Now, if you wanna play traditional lawn darts,
you'll have to hop on a plane
and visit the European Union where the game is still legal.
But here in the US,
you can find a legal version with a modified plastic
blunt tip that replaces the sharp metal tip
'cause that makes quite a lot more sense.
But that takes us to something that's
arguably even more dangerous, smoking.
Now, for most of the 20th century,
cigarette smoking was glorified
as the ultimate embodiment of the American West,
things like tough guys, rebels without a cause.
In advertising, doctors endorsed their favorite brands
while we were told that women
found smoking men irresistible.
But this image of health and sex appeal
slowly began to change starting in 1964
after the US Surgeon General stated definitively that yes,
smoking tobacco can be fatal.
And research shows that flavored cigarettes largely appeal
to and are disproportionately used
by those under 18 years of age.
- That is not how to inhale, Bobby.
You're hot boxing it!
- So to help combat youth smoking, in 2009,
the FDA banned the sale of flavored cigarettes,
including cloves, cinnamon, candy and fruit flavors
pursuant to the Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act,
though menthol cigarettes were exempted from the ban
as well as non-cigarette tobacco products
like electronic cigarettes, cigars,
smokeless, tobacco, and hookah.
But the US is not alone here
as countries with policies banning
some or all types of flavored cigarettes include Canada,
Brazil, Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, Niger, Mauritania,
and 28 member states of the European Union,
Moldova, Turkey, and Singapore.
As for everyone else, well,
not only are flavored cigarettes completely legal
in the vast majority of countries,
but the US ban on cloves actually
created an international incident.
In April 2010, Indonesia,
the world's top producer of clove cigarettes
and the source of the vast majority
of those smoked in the US,
filed a trade dispute with the World Trade Organization.
In its claim,
Indonesia argued that the US ban illegally discriminated
against foreign products of flavored tobacco
and created an unlawful advantage
for domestic tobacco manufacturers.
In September 2011, the WTO agreed,
finding that the ban was indeed discriminatory
because it prohibited clove cigarettes
while allowing the sale of American menthol cigarettes.
The opinion was affirmed on appeal in 2012.
This ruling gave Indonesia the right to retaliate
until either the US changed its law to comply
or the two sides reached a settlement.
And in 2014,
the two countries reached a final settlement on the issue,
ending their dispute.
Under the settlement,
the US agreed it would not arbitrarily discriminate
against certain Indonesian tobacco products
and promised to work with Indonesia on other trade issues.
Now, a decade after the flavored tobacco ban,
public health advocates seemed to have been vindicated.
A 2020 study published in the
"Journal of Adolescent Health"
found that the flavor ban was effective
at reducing cigarette use among young people.
In April of 2022,
the FDA took additional steps against
flavored tobacco products by proposing a ban
on the sales of menthol cigarettes
and all flavored cigars.
In this proposal,
the FDA argued that these actions had
the potential to reduce disease and death by quote
"reducing youth experimentation
and addiction and increasing the number
of smokers that quit."
Public comments will continue through July of 2022,
but Kinder Surprise Eggs are already banned,
so the hard work has already been accomplished.
But that takes us to the next American illegality,
something you potentially might do every single day.
Now, if you were an American pedestrian in 1903,
crossing the street was a very simple endeavor.
If you wanted to cross the street,
you would just walk across the street.
Before the introduction of cars,
roads were seen as a public space
that all citizens had a right to occupy,
even children at play.
But today, if you try and cross the street
without using a crosswalk or cross the street
when the traffic light is flashing do not walk, well,
congratulations, you have committed the crime of jaywalking.
Now, across the pond,
some of our European allies have taken a more laissez-faire
attitude towards jaywalking by making it totally legal.
They just call it walking.
Now, for example,
there are no laws against jaywalking in Norway.
The same goes for the UK,
meaning that The Beatles didn't need to use the crosswalk
for their famous "Abbey Road" cover.
And the Netherlands used to have laws against jaywalking,
but repealed these statutes in 1995
to simplify the traffic code and give pedestrians
more freedom.
In these countries,
your right to cross the street freely
shall not be infringed, but here in the United States,
we've taken a more punitive approach to walking.
Now, every year,
cities like Los Angeles issue tickets
to tens of thousands of pedestrians for jaywalking,
which includes fines worth up to $200.
But this was not always the case.
In fact, ticketing someone for jaywalking
is a relatively young concept in the United States.
According to University of Virginia historian Peter Norton,
the notion of jaywalking,
with jay being an early 20th century slur
for someone stupid or unsophisticated,
was introduced by a group of
auto industry aligned groups in 1920s as part
of a concerted pro-car anti-pedestrian propaganda campaign.
But when cars were first introduced,
there were a few crosswalks painted on the street.
Pedestrians generally ignored the ones that existed
'cause they didn't need to,
but as cars became more widely available,
pedestrian deaths skyrocketed with hundreds of thousands
of Americans, many children,
being killed in car crashes
for the first few decades of the 20th century.
So to counter all this negative publicity,
auto industries sought to enact
traffic laws that would shift blame
from drivers and their cars to the pedestrians themselves.
And it worked.
Not only did cities and states
begin criminalizing jaywalking,
but the US government supported the
anti-pedestrian propaganda campaign by ridiculing jaywalkers
and placing blame on them for automobile crashes.
And today, some criminal justice advocates
believe jaywalking should be decriminalized altogether.
But as an aside,
you should all go watch
"Not Just Bikes" and get orange build
because it's kind of stupid that we've seated all
of this real estate to cars for both driving and parking
when cities should be for the people themselves.
But I'll get down off of my soapbox.
And while it might sound counterintuitive,
countries that allow jaywalking
tend to have lower traffic deaths
as pedestrians tend to cross more safely
and when they aren't worried about criminal penalties.
And criminal justice advocates point out
that jaywalking laws have a very disparate impact
with tickets not evenly applied
and enforcement disproportionately
targeting people of color.
So far, in 2021,
Virginia has heated this call by becoming the first
and so far only state to decriminalize jaywalking
and a similar bill to decriminalize jaywalking was vetoed
by California's governor Gavin Newsom in 2021.
So, for better or worse,
if you wanna stay on the straight and narrow
in 49 of the US states,
you'd better be sure to look both ways
and stay in the crosswalk every time.
For now.
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