When I was growing up, we ran around outside all summer long.  My mom just told us we had to be home by the time the street lights came on.  We'd catch horny toads and locusts, eat wild green onions we pulled out of the front lawn, and throw dirt clods at wasp nests.  We'd ride our bikes and never even consider there was such a thing as a helmet.

Somehow in the intervening years our country has become a bunch of poo-nannies. Don't ride a bike without a helmet; wear a mouth guard when you're playing badminton; and don't forget the sunscreen.

Okay, I kinda get the sunscreen since we know a heckuva lot more about skin cancer than we did when we were kids.  Experts say that applying sunscreen from a young age will significantly decrease the risk of getting skin cancer.  Just don't take it to school with you.

Like a few other states around the country, Louisiana has a law that doesn't allow students to bring sunscreen to school or apply it while they're there, without a note from a doctor.  That's because sunscreen is technically labeled as a medication, and is subject to the same regulations as other medicines.

Are you catching the irony here?  Well, apparently some of the wise souls in our State legislature are.  A bill just gained approval from the House Education Committee that would make an exception for sunscreen and allow public school students to bring it too school and apply it to themselves without a doctor's note.  The bill now goes before the full House.

 

So, soon you'll be able to take that Coppertone to school with you, but don't let us catch you with a Claritin!

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