Virginia lawmaker wants porn declared a public health hazard [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Hat tip, Joe.My.God: VIRGINIA: State Del. “Sideshow” Bob Marshall Intros Bill Declaring Porn A Public Health Hazard Like Smoking

From the Washington Post via the Richmond Times-Dispatch (surely with an assist from the AP).

Virginia lawmaker wants porn declared a public health hazard

Posted: Thursday, December 29, 2016 10:30 pm

By Laura Vozzella The Washington Post

[e-mail]
@LVozzella

A lawmaker is asking the state legislature to declare pornography a public health hazard, a move he hopes will pave the way for limits of some sort.

Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, has proposed a resolution stating that pornography leads to social problems and that the General Assembly, which convenes Jan. 11, needs to do something about it. Just what they should do is unspecified.

The measure does not call for any sort of ban, but rather a broad recognition of “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 the commonwealth and the nation.”

He compared the value of the declaration to the one U.S. Surgeon General Luther L. Terry made in 1964, with the first official report to link cigarettes to disease. ... “We’ve got to say, ‘This is a problem,’” Marshall said in an interview Thursday. “Before smoking was identified as a problem, at least the recognition that it led to certain pathologies was a starting point to put restrictions on it. ... If you recognize it as a problem, then you’re going to try to find ways to solve it within the framework of the statutes we can pass and the institutions we have.”

Wait: smoking is bad now?

From the Post:

Virginia Politics

Va. lawmaker wants porn declared a public health hazard

By Laura Vozzella

[e-mail]
@LVozzella

December 29 at 6:27 PM 

RICHMOND — A Virginia lawmaker is asking the state legislature to declare pornography a public health hazard — a move he hopes will pave the way for limits of some sort.

Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) has proposed a resolution stating that pornography leads to many social problems and that the General Assembly, which convenes its annual session on Jan. 11, needs to do something about it. Just what lawmakers should do is unspecified.