what comes after porn is declared a public health crisis?

Utah started it. More and more states are following suit. A Florida legislator is the latest to propose that his state declare pornography a public health crisis.

Rep. Ross Spano, who represents House District 59, introduced a resolution acknowledging “pornography is creating a public health crisis and contributing to the hypersexualization of children and teens.” 

The Florida resolution, HR 157, concludes,

Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Florida:

That the State of Florida recognizes the public health crisis created by pornography and acknowledges the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change to protect the citizens of this state. [My emphasis.]

Utah passed a similar resolution in 2016. The Utah resolution, SCR 9, concludes,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah, the
Governor concurring therein, recognizes that pornography is a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislature and the Governor recognize the
need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation. [My emphasis.]

Tennessee, South Dakota, Arkansas, Virginia have also declared porn to be a public health crisis. Other states, Georgia and Pennsylvania among them, have proposed the same declaration.

What does this flood of similarly worded resolutions and declarations mean? Does this presage a war on porn?

What kind of policy changes are needed when porn is seen as a public health crisis? How do we prevent pornography?

What kind of regulations might be implemented to control pornography? Porn is easily created and distributed by individuals; how would any regulations be policed and enforced?

When recreational drug use was acknowledged to be a problem, a veritable war ensued.

We have seen what happens when a government declares war on a vice. Millions and millions of people imprisoned. The recreational drug industry driven underground. Business disputes resolved through violence. Less expensive and more powerful drugs more widely available. No noticeable reduction in rates of recreational drug use. A trillion dollars down the drain.

The resolutions sound innocuous but they open the door to laws that will put families at risk. Families who have been broken by incarceration will understand the dangers hiding in well-intentioned laws.

Think about a law meant to prevent minors from seeing porn, different from current laws that prohibit showing porn to minors. Almost anyone can see that preventing children from watching hardcore porn before they can understand is a good idea but if it becomes a law, then what does enforcement mean? What kind of penalties? Who pays the penalties? Will parents be held responsible for kids looking at porn? Will schools search backpacks and lockers for porn the way they search for drugs?

Will these offenses land people on the sex offender registry?

The resolutions and declarations include lists of harmful effects of pornography as justifications for calling porn a public health crisis. The Utah resolution includes,

WHEREAS, potential detrimental effects on pornography's users can impact brain
development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining intimate relationships, as well as problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction; 

The Florida resolution refers to "...deviant, problematic, or dangerous sexual behaviors."

Who defines deviant sexual behaviors or deviant sexual arousal? Do we want the government anywhere near those definitions? Do we want to risk returning to the days of incarcerating people for sodomy?

Driving legal porn underground means that porn performers will have less protection from mistreatment than they have now. It is worth noting that neither Florida nor Utah show any concern for porn performers in their resolutions.

Concerned about violence, Utah says:

WHEREAS, pornography equates violence towards women and children with sex and
pain with pleasure, which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images, and child pornography... [My emphasis.]

Florida also says pornography leads to "...increasing the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, and child pornography". [My emphasis.]

Does it? In a 2016 Psychology Today article, Michael Castleman writes,

Before the late-1990s when the Internet revolutionized access to information, porn was available in books, skin magazines, rented videocassettes, and at the limited number of seedy theaters that screened X-rated movies. But with the arrival of the Internet, millions of porn images and videos were suddenly just a few clicks away for free. As a result, porn quickly became one of men’s top online destinations and porn consumption soared. 

If the anti-porn activists are correct, if porn actually contributes to rape, then starting around 1999 as the Internet made it much more easily available, the rate of sexual assault should have increased. So what happened? According to the Justice Department’s authoritative National Crime Victimization Survey, since 1995, the U.S. sexual assault rate has FALLEN 44 percent. ... 

Clearly, the anti-porn activists are wrong. Porn doesn’t incite men to sexual violence. It looks more like a safety valve that gives men an alternative outlet for potentially assaultive energy. Instead of attacking women, men who might commit that crime can masturbate to unlimited amounts of Internet porn.

Parents who worry about their kids finding porn on the internet have legitimate concerns. Declaring porn a public health crisis seems to line up with those concerns but if that declaration is followed by laws that put families at risk, the public health goals could become personal threats to those families.

Keep an eye on your state legislature. If it has not already declared porn a public health crisis, the proposal is almost certainly coming.