Florida to declare porn a public health risk

In a new move Florida could brand pornography.

The move comes after a resolution was given overwhelming approval from the state House of Representatives committee on Thursday.

The move that was spearheaded by Republican Representative Ross Spano, saw the resolution claiming 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. 

Spano initially wanted to have porn dubbed a state public health crisis in Floria (a status held by the opiod epidemic), 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 along with the resolution's other 17 supporters see pornography as a growing risk in an age of ever-advancing technology and access to media.

Spano's concern over porn stemmed in part from his worry over his own son, local news station WFSU reported. 

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.

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.