Health Policy Commons^™

Why Healthy Behavior Is The Hard Choice, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Our society is structured to encourage unhealthy diets and physically inactive lifestyles, which are key risk factors for chronic diseases including diabetes, heart diseases, and cancers. We are bombarded with advertisements for hyperprocessed foods laden with saturated fat, salt, sugar, and refined carbohydrates, “low-fat” foods often contain high amounts of sugar and salt, and parks and recreation spaces are often inaccessible or unsafe.

Four simple ideas - taxes on unhealthy products, product reformulation, improving the informational environment, and increasing healthy food accessibility - could make healthy behaviors the “default” choice for most consumers. First, taxes on unhealthy products, such as …

E-Cigarettes, Vaping, And Youth, Lawrence O. Gostin, Aliza Y. Glasner

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

E-cigarettes, a relatively new product, storming the tobacco industry are causing a massive stir among public health advocates. While e-cigarettes have the potential to serve as an effective harm reduction tool for existing smokers, they also may present an equally tempting pathway to first time smoking, particularly among youth. Many fear that e-cigarettes will revive the popular smoking culture that has taken decades to dismantle.

In April 2014, the FDA issued proposed rules to “deem” or extend its authority over tobacco products to regulate electronic cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, nicotine gels, waterpipe (hookah) tobacco, and orally ingested dissolvable tobacco products. …

Obesity And The Struggle Within Ourselves, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author argues that we ought to treat our eating, exercise habits, and girth as personal matters, for the most part, but that law can and should make a contribution, as an ally of our longer-term will against our immediate cravings. Law can be our ally in this fashion without command-and-control intrusion into our private lives. Such intrusion is at odds with our core beliefs and unlikely to produce public health success. It is more likely to provoke popular backlash--one reason why some who stand to gain from our unhealthy dining choices try to cast government efforts to inform these …