'Communist' products still illegal in Coral Springs

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published October 5, 2007

CORAL SPRINGS - If a 1975 anti-communist law was enforced in this South Florida city, shoppers might have a hard time buying toys, gift bags, kitchen products and other everyday items.

The city ordinance requires businesses to have a special license, pay an additional $10 fee and display prominent signs if they sell goods from communist countries, including China. Advertising those goods without indicating they are "a Communist import" is prohibited, the law states.

No violations are on record, and no licenses were ever issued, city spokesman Kevin Knutson said.

The city commission this week tentatively approved striking the code from the books. A final vote could come later this month.

"The world moves on and things change," Commissioner Ted Mena said. "You can't stay in the past."

The law cites 17 countries as communist dictatorships that were part of a "vicious, atheistic, criminal conspiracy" to "unfairly compete with American labor" with slave and convict labor.

Some of those countries no longer exist: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. East Germany and West Germany have been become one federal republic. North Vietnam and South Vietnam are now one communist country with normal trade relations with the United States.

"It's funny, no one paid attention to this," said Hugo Calderon, who sells items from China in his Dollar Store Plus.

"Communism ended when the Soviet Union fell down," he said, "except for Cuba and Vietnam and North Korea. No one cares anymore."

[Last modified October 4, 2007, 23:45:52]