The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

Are the health police coming?

One of the more striking developments of the last 25 years has been the increasing prevalence of measures designed to promote public health and safety in areas that were previously believed to be matters of individual choice.

While public health measures are certainly not new, their scope has certainly widened. One of the relatively uncontroversial manifestation of recent health legislation has been mandatory seatbelt laws, which now have been enacted by 49 states (New Hampshire does not require belts for persons over 18.). Proponents of these laws have been able to argue that in addition to protecting operators from injury, the use of seatbelts also avoids risk of accidents to others from drivers losing control of their vehicle.

More controversial has been anti-smoking legislation. While there is a conclusively demonstrated risk to smokers of various forms of cancers, other more recent research has claimed a disputed, and less severe, link between second hand smoke and persons who breathe it in. Many states, including New York, have expanded bans on smoking in workplaces to include prohibitions in restaurants and even bars, not places usually associated with healthy living. Notably, voters in libertarian Nevada passed an anti-smoking ban this year, which, however, does not extend to casinos.

Another very recent example of arguably intrusive health legislation is the recent ban in restaurants by the Health Department in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration of trans fats, liquid oils that are made into solid fats in a process called hydrogenation. Trans fats, which are believed to raise bad cholesterol while lowering good cholesterol, are widely used for frying and baking and appear in a variety of processed foods like crackers, pizza dough and cookies.

Politicians promoting expanded public health measures are not always left of center. For example, consider outgoing conservative Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who is considering a longshot bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Huckabee, who weighed near 300 pounds, decided to lose weight rapidly following ominous advice from his doctor that his obesity would kill him within 10 years and subsequently lost over 110 pounds.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Huckabee's newfound enthusiasm for weight loss has translated into public policy aimed at reducing youth obesity. He has eliminated vending machines in elementary schools and increased school lunch nutritional standards. More controversially, he has initiated a policy of weighing students and sending them home with a body mass index report card.

The point here is not necessarily that mandatory seatbelts, body mass index report cards for students and bans on public smoking and trans fats in restaurants are bad things in themselves. The concern, however, is the slippery slope. Many health related issues arguably affect the public welfare in some way, but still should be the subject of personal preference and discretion rather than legislation. For example, it conceivably might be helpful to public health to ban, say, soft drinks as well as trans fats at restaurants, and to limit public consumption of alcohol, even to adult designated drivers, to two glasses at a sitting. To improve traffic safety, speed limits could also be lowered for all and night driving prohibited to senior citizens who could not pass a stringent vision test.

Most of us, however, would be very uncomfortable with such a nanny state. The serious question is whether we are being pushed in that direction.