Where is the fine line between a helping hand and an suffocating grip?
Minimum prices for alcohol, the smoking ban, campaigns to get our saturated fat intake down – the nanny state is a figure looming in the dark. Well, that’s what some people would like you to think. The picture is rather a lot tougher to actually get right.
Most people are actually in favour of the Government helping them to get healthier, according to one poll done last year. And many health officials, unsurpisingly, such as Dr Alan Maryon-Davis, President of the UK Faculty of Public Health, thinks there needs to be more nannying. Dr Maryon-Davis argues that making policy isn’t only helping those who needs it and there should be more of this kind of nannying.
In some ways he’s right, the smoking ban for example has saved over 40,000 lives since it was introduced on the 1 July, 2007 and the Food Standards Agency‘s campaign against saturated fat is welcome considering in the UK people eat on average 20 per cent more saturated fat than they should.
But ultimately it’s all about helping the public, not controlling them, and when they perceive this help to push too far, that’s when they can rebel. In the Netherlands, for example, the smoking ban has been mired in extreme opposition.
The story of the nanny state isn’t as Big Brother-esque as many would make it seem, but what the public wants and needs have to carefully be taken into consideration.
One Comment
I agree that the state should take into consideration the public interests. However, nannying also has a goal in “health economics”, which is eventually also a public interest. Patients with cardiovascular diseases, due to smoking, lots of saturated fat intake, and an unhealthy lifestyle in general, are costing the health sector way too much. Money that otherwise could be spent on patients who have a disease not related to unhealthy living. So (extreme) nannying is not only to save lifes, but also to save money. Funny fact: smokers are cheap when it comes to medical costs, since they tend to die relatively young and sudden of lung cancer before they get the chance to develop an “expensive” disease of the elderly.