I've been quiet for a month now. The last four weeks have mostly involved me struggling with my personal beliefs and then the beliefs that seem to be held by the larger public health community. One of the things I keep running into is this sense that we should outlaw things like bacon, soda, cigarettes: these things are not good for you, I know. And I confess! I am a habitual user of bacon, an occasional consumer of soda, and I have given up my occasional-cig-when-I'm-drinking habit. But to flat-out forbid their use ever?!
I'm told that I am not liberal enough for public health, in the sense of liberalism as expanding government control. In this, perhaps, I could nearly be considered libertarian!
The other thing I find myself running into is this attitude that poor people are ignorant and obese people are ignorant or lack willpower. Admittedly, it isn't quite explicitly expressed, but there is this general sense that IF ONLY people realized they were engaging in these harmful behaviors, they would stop. That is, obviously, not the case. Smokers continue to smoke, even when people they know die of lung cancer and even after they have been forced outside to smoke in lonely corners, at least fifty feet away from the door (as they should be!). The sense that we have to save people from themselves- this drives me crazy.
Anyway, I just don't feel like this is something I love enough. But I don't know where the hell to go now.
