Of course not. Why, the French Senate is considering restrictions on the promotion and sale of cell phones to children. And as Newsom told The Chronicle's Heather Knight, "If we prevail, and I believe we will prevail, other cities will follow suit."
The siren call -- a Model for Other Cities -- is ineluctable to a mayor who cannot resist the whiff of bragging rights at the Davos Economic Forum annual confab.
Newsom can point to the city's Precautionary Principle Ordinance, which cites "a duty to take anticipatory action to prevent harm." That's EssEff-ese for: more mandates for warning signs.
After all, who possibly could object to signs that simply inform consumers? Problem is, after the passage of Proposition 65, which mandated warning signs for anything remotely toxic, in 1986, Californians don't even notice warning signs. You see them in buildings, on line, in elevators -- even at the cell phone store -- except you don't notice them because they're like background noise.
So an Outline by Team Newsom proposes to get around warning-blindness by requiring that stores post a phone's SAR -- or Specific Absorption Rate, a new term you can learn and forget -- in type as large as the font for the phone's price. (Talk about your invitation to small print.)
The most annoying part of all: Newsom and city supervisors spend too much time trying to do other people's jobs -- when they ought to be working on improving the quality of life in San Francisco.
There's no need to be a fill-in for the FDA. If Newsom thinks it is his job to reduce risky behavior, he instead could focus on the estimated 900-plus new cases of HIV in the city each year.
Closer to home, if Newsom feels the urge to warn people of potential threats, he might want to put up a warning signs under Welcome to San Francisco banners -- that disclose the city's 99 homicides in 2008. As the precautionary principle ordinance notes, the public has a "right to know."