Happy New Year..!
When the new millennium rolled over more than a decade back someone wrote that it is an extremely precise count down to an arbitrary point in time. :-) It is indeed true when you consider the geological age of the planet. Still if our views are not that extreme, these milestones start to gather more meaning simply because we choose to attribute it to them. One way in which the new year milestone really affects lives is through a basket full of new laws that become effective each year at the stroke of midnight. Since US prides itself as a nation of laws, there is never any dearth of new and unusual laws, particularly since each state promulgates its own set of laws applicable just to that state. By some count, 40,000 new laws went into effect today in US alone..! Here are a few that are noteworthy.
1. California: Students will be allowed to play sports and use school bathrooms "consistent with their gender identity," and not their birth identity. What this means is trans-gender students can choose which team to play sports with and what bathroom to use.
2. Colorado: People can buy up to an ounce of marijuana for recreational use from a state-licensed retail store. This law has been getting a lot of attention as some two dozen retain marijuana stores have opened in multiple cities & towns with state license while as per federal law it is still a crime to buy or sell marijuana..! The federal Department of Justice has indicated that they are not going to spend resources prosecuting these cases and so I hear that people have been lining up in front of the stores today to be one of the first set of customers. The Colorado state will be collecting more than 27% tax from each sale.
3. Delaware: Sale, possession, or distribution of shark fins is prohibited.
4. Illinois: New "lemon pet" law enacted allows pet owners to return the animal or be reimbursed for veterinary costs "if an illness was not disclosed by the seller." Apparently such a law already exists in 21 other states. A different state law prohibits anyone under 18 from using indoor tanning facility.
5. Maine: The 48th state to require a check-off for organ donation on driver's licenses to promote organ donation.
6. Missouri and Montana: Private health insurance plans should cover teleheath (remote) health care services. Since some US states are sparsely populated, hospitals and physicians provide health related services using video conference facilities rather than asking patients to travel long distances to hospitals & clinics. So, laws are evolving to address such developments.
7. Oregon: New mothers will be allowed to take their placentas home from the hospital as health benefits have been linked to ingesting placenta. Different law that went into effect bans smokers from smoking in their vehicles when children are present.
8. All over the country several provisions of the AHA (Affordable Healthcare Act) also known as Obamacare goes into effect today.
What I love are local and national level organizations that are dedicated to regularly scanning and scouring antiquated laws. Without that effort you will be surprised by the number of meaningless laws that hang-around in the books! For several interesting examples, see
By clicking on the names of the states listed on top of this website, you can get to know other dumb laws that are in existence in various states in US of A. If 40,000 laws are enacted each year, I am sure over the years we would have collected several gems. :-)
-sundar.
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