The CPSC may not have the resources but imagine what may happen if Mom buys a used toy for her kid at a used toy store, discovers it contains lead then goes after the reseller. The CPSC doesn't have to go after the retailers directly. Or if Mom does research to find out what toys contain lead, goes shopping around the local used toy stores, finds a lead-containing toy then sues store for selling lead toys. Again, any parent with a lawyer becomes the CPSC's enforcer.
You're confusing product
liability law with product
safety law. She can do that regardless of this law under existing product
liability law -- but only if she can show damages (which she can't simply by buying the product). This law doesn't affect that.
The store
could get fined if she turns them in to the feds, but those fines aren't of the devastating level of product
liability cases. And we're back to the issue of a small agency with few resources having bigger fish to fry.
State AGs have some powers (
http://www.cpsc.gov/about/cpsia/summaries/218brief.html) to enforce this law, but those apply more to stopping the sale of violative products -- as in stopping people who willfully refuse to stop selling them ... and even in such limited cases the AGs are bound by running the cases by the feds.
Don't know the details, but supposedly there is an exemption being allowed for second hand and thrift stores. At least that is according to the news report I saw last night.
It's not an "exemption." This broohaha simply is a misunderstanding of the law. See my originial post in which CPSC clarified that the testing requirements do not apply to resellers -- they
never did despite all the news reports to the contrary (Imagine that, a media frenzy over an inaccurate story).
