By Donna V. Scaglione
Are the government’s efforts to enforce healthier health habits among its citizens a matter of nanny government run amok or common sense approaches to public health issues?
In recent months federal health officials have issued an array of warnings and mandates designed to encourage the public to quit smoking, eat less salt, read menu calorie counts, and consume more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. This, officials say, is all in an effort to save lives and cut skyrocketing healthcare costs related to combating heart disease, obesity, diabetes, lung cancer, and other ailments resulting from diet and lifestyle choices.
But critics charge such actions are an intrusion on personal lives and an illustration of government overreach.
The Food and Drug Administration’s unveiling last week of graphic new images required on cigarette packages starting in September 2012 is the latest government attempt at influencing personal choice. As part of a tobacco-control law passed in 2009, the FDA is requiring cigarette manufacturers to cover the top half of cigarette boxes with one of nine photos featuring a man smoking through a tracheotomy hole, a diseased lung next to a healthy lung, a corpse with a sewn chest, and other mostly gruesome scenarios.
“Smoking is our leading cause of preventable death in this country,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hammer said on the “PBS News Hour” last week. “It's a pretty horrifying medical and public health problem. And we need to address it aggressively.”
In their announcement, officials noted that tobacco-related products kill nearly half a million Americans each year, and that one of the goals of the packaging requirement is to scare young people from even starting the habit.
But those who oppose the mandate and other smoking-related regulations such as banning lighting up in public parks say the government is overstepping its bounds by trying to control individual choice.
"I think they're getting too personal," New York City smoker Monica Rodriguez told The Associated Press earlier this year in response to that city’s move to prohibit smoking in some public places, including Central Park. "I don't think it's OK. They're taking away everyone's privileges."
What’s more, critics of government health mandates argue that some of the rulings take an unfair one-size-fits-all approach, which doesn’t always work when it comes to the health of individuals. That’s the case with the FDA’s plans to issue limits on the amount of sodium food manufacturers can use in processed foods, says Morton Satin, director of technical and regulatory affairs for the Salt Institute.
“When salt, an essential nutrient, is significantly reduced, the population's response is mixed,” he wrote in a USA Today opinion piece in April. “About 30 percent experience a minor drop in blood pressure, about 20 percent experience a slight increase, and the rest experience no change at all. So any policy that treats the population as a homogeneous mass is discriminatory because we all react differently.”
Also, some of the policies set by the government are not grounded in strong, evidence-based science, or they don’t consider everything in the scientific literature, critics argue. Such is the case with the FDA’s sodium plan, Satin notes, as well as New York City’s public places smoking ban, another expert argues.
"I disagree that there is a scientific basis for banning smoking in wide open outdoor spaces where people can easily avoid exposure," Dr. Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences at Boston University, told The Associated Press. "Some of the health groups have been exaggerating the evidence."
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