We're losing our freedom bit by bit with bans

These days, we are bombarded with demands for bans by a garden variety of supporters of the nanny state and politicians are happy to help. Politicians seem to adore bans. Why? Because bans allow politicians to appear to be creating simple solutions to whatever problems have captured the imagination of the worrying class. However, bans also create unintended consequences and even worse, they reduce responsible people to supervised children with few opportunities to make choices on their own.

A well-intentioned public risks being buried under the ban demands of the ban-crazy worrying class. Its list of bans reads like somebody's day out at the mall. Bottled water and incandescent light bulb bans litter the province. Plastic bags may soon be banned across Canada. Greater Victoria has just voted to ban teens from tanning beds. Ban the tan? When no intrusion is too small for government to consider, it's a sign the nanny state has run amok.

Bans might seem like a good idea on the surface, but have unintended consequences that sometimes create even bigger problems than the ones they were supposed to solve. For example, although the City of Vancouver voted to phase out the sale of bottled water, the cash-strapped Vancouver Parks Board has refused to stop selling bottled water at park facilities because it would lose $250,000 in revenue on bottled water sales.

The green social engineers in the provincial government have banned incandescent light bulbs and want everyone to replace them with compact fluorescent bulbs. Compact fluorescents contain mercury, and mercury is dangerous to human health. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns if a fluorescent bulb breaks, leave the room immediately and air out the room for 10-15 minutes. Then go back into the room and put all the broken fragments into a sealed container. Put the container in the trash outside and continue airing out the room for several hours. People worried about mercury poisoning, not to mention skyrocketing home heating costs, might want to consider stocking up on incandescent bulbs.

Plastic bags are another everyday item subject to the attention of the worrying class, but their replacement appears to have problems as well. Many people have voluntarily chosen to replace plastic bags with reusable cloth bags. Seems well intentioned. However it should come as no surprise by now that the law of untended consequences comes into play here too. Turns out reusable bags fill up not only with groceries, but with bacteria as well. Worse yet, some contain lead and, in what has to be a moment of true irony, threaten to fill landfills.

Go figure.

So while bans are great tools for politicians to get lots of positive media attention while appearing to be doing something tough on some issue, they sometimes create new problems.

Worse yet, as we leave more and more decisions in the hands of the nanny statists, we are, bit by bit, chipping away at our freedom of choice. It's time to stop asking government to solve every problem by banning everything undesirable in products and other people.

Bans might seem like a good idea, but once government's role stretches beyond keeping us safe from violations and invasions by other people and other nations, we are in danger of losing our ability to make even the simplest choices about how to lead our own lives. 


This article first appeared in the Vancouver Province, January 16, 2011