HEALTH RELATED LEGISLATION
Two news items pertaining to health-related legislation caught my attention this summer. In the July 22 issue of The Wall Street Journal, in an article entitled “Exiling the Happy Meal,” reporter Sarah McBride discussed proposed legislation in Los Angeles that would ban fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC from opening in a 32-square-mile section of the city. Not surprisingly, one critic referred to the proposed legislation as an “example of a nanny state.” Another critic, the president of the California Restaurant Association, blamed the obesity epidemic on “sedentary lifestyles and lack of nutrition education.”
The article also referred to New York City’s law requiring disclosure of calories on the main menus above the counter, and noted that San Francisco also will implement calories disclosure legislation.
A second article, dated July 30, also in The Wall Street Journal, entitled “San Francisco Votes For New Tobacco Rules” reporter Ann Zimmerman describes San Francisco’s proposed law to ban tobacco sales at pharmacies. An article in the Journal the day before, also written by Ann Zimmerman, entitled “Drugstore Tobacco Sales Under Fire” summarizes arguments from opponents of the legislation that suggest that the legislation will have little impact on smoking rates and will force retailers to deny members of the public something they want.
The fundamental divide between supporters and opponents of these kinds of legislation is whether changing the environment in which people shop and seek out restaurants will make a significant difference in public behaviors. A recent book entitled Nudge, co-authored by Professors Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, makes a compelling argument that the environmental cues given to people matter greatly. In their view, the government always is creating a “nanny state” environment. The only question is whether it is a healthy or unhealthy environment.
While nutrition education certainly makes a difference, as Melinda Beck of The Wall Street Journal in her July 29 column entitled “On the Table: the Calories Lurking in Restaurant Food,”Dr. Brian Wansink of Cornell University, in his great book Mindless Eating, clearly demonstrates that how much we eat and what we eat are highly influenced by what is available, affordable, accessible, and abundant.
With respect to tobacco products, the easy availability in pharmacies has two behavioral effects: it makes access to tobacco easy, and it sends a symbolic message that tobacco usage is not as risky to health as we know it to be. Pharmacies have a branding as places to which one goes to buy products that enhance health, not places that destroy health.
I commend Wegman’s, the grocery chain based in Rochester, New York, my hometown when I was growing up, which announced recently that it will stop selling cigarettes in its stores. While some individuals will stop going to Wegman’s because it refuses to sell cigarettes, I would assume that it will gain credibility as a grocery retailer firmly committed to health.
These legislative measures will not solve the problem of unhealthy behaviors, but they certainly are a step in the right direction.
