title:  Republican: Porn Is Worse Than Cocaine, Gov’t Has To Act On ‘Public Health Crisis’
text: A Republican state senator in Utah believes that porn is such a threat to public health that he is proposing legislation to make the state take his aversion to skin flicks official. Whatever happened to limited government?Sen. Todd Weiler introduced his legislation on Friday, asking that the state recognize that porn is creating a public health hazard. He called for a reform to take on the  pornography epidemic that is harming the citizens of Utah and the nation. The politician told the Daily News that porn was more addictive than powerful drugs, and the public needed to start seeing adult films as a national epidemic. I have read books and I have experts tell me pornography is more difficult to overcome than cocaine,  he said.Weiler, 48, compares public attitudes on adult films in 2016 to early 20th century feelings about cigarettes, where doctors openly smoked and airplanes had smoking sections. He believes that his legislation will help to shift public opinion.The state senator made another strange comparison in an interview with a newspaper. Despite most Republican conservatives denying the existence of climate change, Weiler said denying the negative health effects of adult films was like denying climate science:  These are scientific facts, just like global warming. The legislator cited his experience as a divorce lawyer in providing him with an expert, insider point of view on the purported destruction that adult material can inflict on married couples.Weiler did draw a line in the sand for his proposed bill:  We re not going to outlaw masturbation in Utah. Even in a religiously conservative state like Utah, Weiler probably faces an uphill challenge in changing public attitudes. The state ranks as the #1 buyer of adult films in a 2009 survey, and a Harvard study showed that more than 5 out of every 1,000 households in Uitah paid for adult content online. Featured image from YouTube