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healthier without censorship

Dear healthmatters — It was very refreshing to read Richard Lawson’s alternative “health of the environment” strategy for improving the public health (Clean up or cough up, issue 27).

With one exception, his proposals were sensible, liberal (small “l”) policies which should be supported because they improve society generally, as well as simply health in particular.

The exception is his suggestion that we “tax violence on TV, film and video”. This is absurd in itself, illiberal (i.e. authoritarian) and likely to have no particular benefit for mental health, as he seems to assume.

It is absurd because violence exists and is real. Taxing its representation (or even its reporting — what about the evening news?) is like taxing the colour red. It makes no sense. Some TV violence is gratuitous, granted. But much is clear, responsible and necessary for a mature shared understanding of our world. To “tax violence” in films or video is to suggest we should be protected, like children, from the real world.

The result, in terms of mental health, would be to infantilise us all, as if we were all patients in a large asylum, rather than to help those who have already suffered enough at the hands of authoritarians.

I hope that healthmatters will take a robust stance in opposing all forms of censorship, even those promulgated in the name of “health”.