Are 40w cool whites becoming scarce?

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Are 40w cool whites becoming scarce?
From: Neil Frank <nfrank at mindspring_com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 20:49:25 -0500

Someone in Wisconsin wrote me to say that he was not able to find 40w
coolwhite bulbs, but instead a 25w "efficient type" that they claim are
almost as bright to human eyes, and still cool white spec.

>Some salesman at Ace hardware told me this after I'd been
>to four other places with no luck finding the most common bulb in the universe.
>He said that the lumens were slightly less but not to the degree of the 
>energy savings in wattage (they had to attend a seminar on it to explain to 
>customers).  The original 40w CW is replaced by a 35w EE "energy efficient"
>which doesn't work with the "shop-lite" type ballasts, so they created
>a 25W CW for shop-lite ballasts since the original 40W CW didn't work
>efficiently with them anyway.  "To the human eye you can hardly tell the
>difference'" he tells me.  

Is this true elsewhere in the country? Caused by National EE legislation or
just in WI??
Neil Frank      Aquatic Gardeners Association         Raleigh, NC