PETA Celebrates Laguna Beach’s Vote to Ban Glue Traps

For Immediate Release:
April 29, 2026

Contact:
Nicole Perreira 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA President Tracy Reiman regarding yesterday’s vote by the Laguna Beach City Council to adopt a citywide glue trap ban:

The Laguna Beach City Council has made a momentous decision to protect the smallest members of its community, passing a glue trap ban that will prevent thousands of mice, rats, birds, lizards, and other animals from suffering slow, agonizing, and terrifying deaths. Glue traps are cruel, indiscriminate, and increasingly recognized as unacceptable, and PETA encourages everyone to protect animals in their own communities by refusing to buy or use these cruel torture devices.

Rats are empathetic, family-oriented individuals who will put themselves in harm’s way to save someone else. Rats, mice, and other small animals—including birds, lizards, and squirrels—who get stuck in the adhesive that covers glue traps struggle desperately to escape, sometimes chewing off their own limbs before succumbing to starvation, dehydration, asphyxiation, or blood loss.

PETA’s campaign against the use of glue traps has led major retailers such as CVS, Target, Walgreens, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree to ban them, and PETA spearheaded the introduction and passage of the first four city-level glue trap bans in the United States—in Culver City, Ojai, Ventura, and West Hollywood, California. Laguna Beach is now the fifth U.S. city to take this compassionate step, building momentum for more communities to follow. Glue traps are also banned in England, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, and throughout much of Australia, Belgium, and India.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.