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47 U.C.D. L. Rev. 121 (2013-2014)
Shame, Blame, and the Emerging Law of Obesity Control

handle is hein.journals/davlr47 and id is 127 raw text is: Shame, Blame, and the Emerging Law of Obesity Control Lindsay F. Wiley* In using law as a tool to combat the obesity epidemic, legal scholars and policymakers are drawing heavily on the lessons of tobacco control. This Article describes the resulting emergence of obesity control law and argues for a radical reorientation of it from a denormalization strategy based on the tobacco control experience to a destigmatization strategy based on the HIV prevention experience. The war on obesity is nearing a political crossroads. Subsidies and food industry regulations aimed at making our environment more conducive to physical activity and healthy eating are in danger of losing out to cheaper and more politically palatable measures aimed at convincing obese individuals to lose weight without making it more feasible for them to do so. For example, recent legal reforms penalize obese employees and Medicaid recipients through higher out-of-pocket health-care costs, shame parents and kids by measuring and reporting students' body mass index through the school system, and demoralize obese patients by promoting unsolicited and ineffective weight loss counseling by physicians. These reforms threaten to further stigmatize obese people - and lead to worse . Copyright @ 2013 Lindsay F. Wiley. Associate Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Health Law & Justice Program, American University Washington College of Law. The author wishes to thank Alena Allen, Heather Bednarek, Leo Beletsky, Rebecca Dresser, Rob Gatter, Kevin Outterson, Efthimios Parasidis, Elizabeth Pendo, Jesse Goldner, Christina Ho, Sandra Johnson, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, Ted Ruger, Robert Schwartz, and Sidney Watson for their critical engagement with an early draft of this article during the 2012 Health Law Scholars Workshop at St. Louis University; Scott Burris, Robert Dinerstein, Larry Gostin, Binny Miller, Matt Pierce, Rebecca Puhl, and Rebecca Rausch for helpful discussions about this project; Jonas Anderson, Amanda Frost, Amanda Leiter, and Benjamin Leff for their invaluable feedback and support; Jamie Hennelly, Nick Masero, and Lauren Nussbaum for their fantastic research assistance; and Dean Claudio Grossman for his unflagging support of junior faculty scholarship. 121

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