From prohibiting tobacco use without a prescription to mandating that fast food chains post calorie information on their menus, the Oregon legislature has recently proposed a spate of bills that would use the muscle of government to alter how Oregonians eat, drink and smoke. These regulations represent a significant effort by legislators to usher in health reforms while simultaneously scoring political points from their constituencies. While Democrats generally perceive the bills as progressive steps toward reducing the harmful influence of smoking and obesity, Republicans decry them as the ineffectual dogma of a nanny state.
Frankly, both are oversimplifying. However, the aggregate force of this health and social-regulation bonanza should provoke Oregonians to question how much government influence they want trolling through their dinner plates and swimming in their pub glasses and ashtrays.
If Portland Democratic Rep. Mitch Greenlick has his way, Oregon smokers would be at the total mercy of government. In the past, Greenlick has backed numerous anti-smoking bills – mostly tax increases – but has recently made waves after proposing smoking be allowed only with a doctor’s prescription. Greenlick’s proposal – which would be attached to a bill increasing the age of tobacco possession from 18 to 21- is both a back-door attempt at making smoking illegal and an example of abusing the legislative process for political grandstanding.
No one, including Greenlick, believes the proposal will pass. In fact, if it did pass in its current form, the ramifications for the state of Oregon would be fiscally disastrous. Oregon receives $255 million from tobacco taxes and has another 60-cent-per-pack tax pending. The revenue funds a variety of essential state services, such as health care. Considering the state’s budget shortfall, these programs would be impossible to replace if the tobacco revenue was lost.
Though Greenlick admits the intention of his proposal is to lay groundwork for future legislation, a future where state-sanctioned doctors prescribe tobacco to patients could be apocalyptic for Oregon’s medical industry. Greenlick highlights the state’s control of pseudoephedrine – an allergy drug often used for the production of meth – as an example of how tobacco prescriptions could work. The flaw in this argument is that when used safely, pseudoephedrine is innocuous, while tobacco kills close to 400,000 Americans a year. Just weeks ago the Oregon Supreme Court confirmed a $79.5 million judgment against Phillip Morris. Can you imagine the sort of medical lawsuits that Greenlick’s policy would engender once doctors start prescribing cigarettes?
While Greenlick’s policy ideas have no real functionality, Tina Kotek (D-Portland) is proposing a bill that would help Oregonians stay fit by mandating restaurants provide calorie counts on their menus. The bill is motivated by a 2008 study from the Journal of Public Health that shows that fast food customers who have access to calorie information purchase food with 52 fewer calories than those without such information.
Sixty percent of Oregonians are overweight, many of whom suffer from dangerous secondary complications such as diabetes and heart disease. Fast food companies take a variety of highly calculated measures to manipulate and capitalize on the eating habits of consumers, while purposefully not disclosing the high calorie content of their foods. For this reason, it makes sense to encourage individuals to make healthier choices about food consumption by providing them with accurate and detailed information about what they’re eating.
Greenlick’s and Kotek’s bills have similar intentions – they both seek to bolster the health of Oregonians – but their philosophical underpinnings are radically different. While Greenlick believes the role of government should be to act as a czar forbidding certain fruits, Kotek’s legislation takes a much more appropriate perspective: It doesn’t prohibit unhealthy actions, it prohibits misinformation.
This should be the role of government regulation in Oregon: not to decide what we should eat, drink or smoke, but to give citizens access to the materials they need to make the most informed and educated decisions about what they consume. We should treat our citizens like adults capable of making choices, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that many of them aren’t savvy enough to square off with commercial interests with an incentive to obscure information.
Of course, as all Oregonians know, the best place to discuss matters of government regulation is the local bar, so take a stroll down to your favorite Eugene watering hole and strike up a conversation or two. While you’re there, make sure to ask the barkeep about the Honest Pint Act. Proposed just last week, it would require state health inspectors to inspect beer glasses to ensure that bars aren’t skimping customers on an ounce or two of brew.
Personally, I think the legislature should convene a commission to investigate the insidious practice of excessive foam, as well.
[email protected]