Florida could brand pornography a public health risk after a resolution was given overwhelming approval from the state House of Representatives committee .
Spearheaded by Republican Representative Ross Spano, the resolution claimed that research has found links between pornography and ‘mental and physical illnesses,’ among a host of other societal and individual ills.
The resolution passed by 18 to one in the House, where the sole dissenter, Democrat Dr Cary Pigman, was also the only medical doctor on the committee.
Bill sponsor Spano initially wanted to have have pornography dubbed a state public health crisis – a status held by the opioid epidemic – in Florida, but the resolution passed by deeming adult material a ‘risk’ instead.
The resolution states that pornography is a public health risk from which Florida needs to ‘protect the citizens of [the] state’ through ‘education, prevention, research and policy change.’
Spano – who is running for attorney general as well – and the resolution’s other 17 supporters see pornography as a growing risk in an age of ever-advancing technology and access to media.
Through ubiquitous screens, ‘children are exposed to pornography at an alarming rate’ which is contributing to their ‘hypersexualization.’
Spano’s concern over porn stemmed in part from his worry over his own son, local news station WFSU reported.
‘I asked my child, “Well when did you first?” He said, “I was probably ten.” And I said, “Well how did you..?” And he said, “An older kid showed me. An older kid in the neighborhood,”‘ Spano told the station.
In the resolution, he cites research finding that 27 percent of young adults ‘report that they first viewed pornography before the onset of puberty.’
The resolution says that porn has ties to a wide-ranging slew of adverse health effects, including low self-esteem, eating disorders, normalizing violence and abuse of women and children, marital problems and that it is ‘potentially biologically addictive, resulting in the user consuming increasingly more shocking material to satisfy the addiction.’
In fact, psychologists and psychiatrists have considered adding porn to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but it was once again excluded from the book’s fifth edition.
In a recent interview, New York psychologist Dr Ari Tuckman told Daily Mail Online that ‘porn can be easy to blame as the cause, but it’s really part of the problem’ when it comes to relationships.
Research has shown that watching pornography earlier tends to be linked to having sex younger, and small studies suggest that exposure at a young age may affect men’s attitudes toward women.
But Pornhub’s recently released statistics revealed that more and more women are watching pornography, which Dr Tuckman says indicates a move toward greater sexual empowerment and freedom for women.
The porn industry has been a boon to the Florida economy, and Florida has historically been a boon to the porn industry.
The Exxxotica Porn Convention descends upon Fort Lauderdale every year, and Orlando and Miami both ranked in the top-ten cities for porn consumption in 2012.
On the other hand, the state also has a bad track record of child pornography cases.
Ultimately, most experts say that research on porn is inconclusive at best, and often suffers from poor methodology.
But whether porn falls into the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ category, Dr Pigman asserted that, either way, it doesn’t fall into the ‘biggest’ category.
‘I keep thinking about the other things that are public health hazards which involve a far larger number of people,’ he told WFSU.
‘I am a practicing physician. We have problems with hypertension, with obesity, with diabetes, with Zika,’ Dr Pigman said.
He also noted that other sexual health issues, like the transmission of HIV and STDs have been on the rise.
While transmission of HIV is down in most of the country, HIV has seen an eight percent uptick in the last three years in Florida, and a new case of Zika was reported as recently as November.
Of porn, Dr Pigman said: ‘I’m not sure that we need to spend legislative time enunciating a particular complaint when we have others that are far more pressing.’ Daily mail
