“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms,” Vivek Murthy writes in a New York Times op-ed, “stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.”

An incredibly dumb idea, but it enjoys a certain amount of public attention because Vivek Murthy’s day job is with the federal government  as (checks notes) surgeon general.

If Murthy wants a “warning label” on something, why not just order it instead of whining about it in the Times? Two reasons:

The first is that he can’t just order it. The office of surgeon general doesn’t come with a label maker. He only gets one if Congress gives him one.

The other is that his op-ed isn’t about “protecting children” or “the public health.” It’s about grandstanding on a current moral panic so as to associate the name “Vivek Murthy,” in the public consciousness, with “protecting children” and “the public health.”

As his second surgeon general stint likely nears its end, Murthy’s obviously trying to burnish his “public intellectual” credentials for a more successful return to the not-so-private sector. Instead of reprising his previous four years in the TV talking head / non-fiction book authorship (Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World) wilderness between the Obama and Biden administrations, he’s presumably hoping for a steadier gig with a larger paycheck — at MSNBC, perhaps, or CNN.

“Protecting children” and “the public health” are to political demagoguery as Gallagher’s tricycle or Steve Martin’s “arrow through the head” are to stand-up comedy.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you one looks at it, “warning labels” do little to discourage, and may even encourage, the behaviors they “warn” about.

I started smoking as a teen, a couple of decades after Congress let the surgeon general Luther Terry borrow its label maker for use on cigarettes in 1964. The next person I meet who’s my age and claims to have never taken up smoking because of those warning labels will be the first. Ineffectual.

As for encouragement, anyone paying attention knows that kids actively seek out music, movies, etc. with “mature content” warning labels. Those labels essentially serve as “this is the good stuff” advertising for the products they appear on.

The only valuable prospective use for “warning labels” on social media platforms is as an “I made that happen” item on Murthy’s resume. Kids looking for an “I’m edgy” thrill would treat the “warning labels” as endorsements; parents inclined to panic over their kids’ use of TikTok or Instagram would do so with or without Murthy’s assistance.

In the meantime, there’s that pesky constitutional prohibition on compelled speech. Congress shouldn’t ignore it, but probably will.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On June 14, the US Supreme Court overturned former US president Donald Trump’s 2018 “bump stock ban.”

Like many SCOTUS rulings, this outcome turned on neither the plain text and meaning of the US Constitution (under which the ban was clearly illegal) nor common sense (under which the ban was clearly idiotic — everyday objects as mundane as belt loops and rubber bands can be used as “bump stocks”).

Instead, the court ruled (in the negative) on the question of whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has the power to magically change the definition of the term “machine gun” on the whim of the president.

I’d rather SCOTUS had just upheld the plain text and unambiguous meaning of the Second Amendment (under which laws against “machine guns” are void whether the term includes “bump stocks” or not), but close enough for government work, I guess.

Perhaps the most useful outcome of the ruling is its tendency to highlight Donald Trump’s actual record on gun rights as he seeks a second term in the White House.

In February, Trump  assured National Rifle Association members that he was “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House. … During my four years … there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield. … Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president.”

In the wake of the SCOTUS ruling, his campaign’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt asserted that “[t]he Court has spoken and their decision should be respected,” assuring the public that Trump “has been and always will be a fierce defender of Americans’ Second Amendment rights.”

But back in 2018, when he was still actually the president, Trump told the public at a news conference: “We’re knocking out bump stocks. I’ve told the NRA … bump stocks are gone.”

And back in 2018, then-president Trump, addressing lawmakers in support of “red flag” laws, came out against not just the Second Amendment but the Fifth Amendment as well: “I like taking the guns early …. Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

His 2018 actions speak louder than his 2024 words — and highlight the larger problem the Republican Party ran into when it gave its 2016 presidential nomination to a life-long progressive Democrat for president in an (unsuccessful) attempt to out-authoritarian the Democratic Party on immigration.

For all his self-promoting “outsider” guff, Trump’s a typical politician: On the campaign trail, he pretends to be whoever and whatever he thinks his supporters want him to be; once in office, he tends to revert to his true form.

Never trust a politician (any politician) to protect your rights (any of your rights). Thus endeth the lesson.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On June 13, the US Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval (in 2000) of mifepristone, aka RU-486, aka “the abortion pill.”

The court ruled unanimously, but on an issue of standing rather than on the facts. The case was brought by a group of doctors who oppose abortion and do not themselves prescribe mifepristone for that use . “[A] plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue,” Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in the court’s opinion.

The facts, however, are also important.

“If we had a war on abortion in this country,” Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne told CNN two months before FDA approved mifepristone,  “within five years, men would be having abortions.”

Taking Harry’s “slippery slope” argument at face value for its time — he died in 2006 and is thus unavailable for comment on current kerfuffles over gender identity — it’s a fair riff on the title of his 1996 campaign book: Why Government Doesn’t Work. The war on drugs hasn’t “worked.” The war on poverty hasn’t “worked.”

Men? Maybe not … but women who choose to abort a pregnancy have enjoyed ways of doing so since time immemorial, government edicts to the contrary notwithstanding.

I don’t have to like that choice. You don’t have to like that choice. Women have that choice whether we like it or not, even if we go to courts or politicians to try to take it from them.

Harry didn’t like that choice — he was “pro-life” and morally opposed to abortion — but wisely opposed government involvement in it. In fact, he opposed the very existence of the FDA (as do I), preferring to leave drug development, testing, and sales to the private sector.

It’s unlikely that banning mifepristone would prevent so much as a single abortion. It would just push women toward other methods — methods more likely to result in their own deaths in addition to the deaths of the fetuses involved. Fortunately, mifepristone would still be available on the black market, but that would become just another game of roulette — is it the real thing or just a fake pill?

Banning mifepristone would also make it less available to for management of symptoms related to early miscarriage, as well as for patients with Cushing’s syndrome, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, and psychotic depression, all of which it’s used to treat.

I’m well aware of the moral arguments against abortion. I don’t make a habit of sharing my moral position on that issue.

I will, however, share my moral position on how to handle the issue in the moment. That moral position is to support women making difficult decisions, and to limit any argument over those decisions to gentle, understanding persuasion.

Legislation has never ended, and never will end, abortion. Even totalitarian regimes like that of Romania’s Nicolae Ceauaescu have historically proven incapable of eliminating it. And trying to do it that way leads us toward such totalitarian outcomes.

Whatever their reasons, SCOTUS got this one right.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY