In the States we are pursuing what we call the “public health crisis”, and a number of the states have already voted to declare the use of pornography as a public health crisis. The Centers for Disease Control is considering it as well.
We're looking at it broadly, so that there are some health crises. Such things as STIs, and erectile dysfunction in young men, are part of the health crises. Some are coming up over the horizon that we may consider in the future. For example, there's been a dramatic increase in anal and colon cancer in young adults by thousands of a percentage point. They're trying to determine what's causing that. It may have some connection to the increase in anal sex. We're looking at that.
They also consider other factors, such as the increase in divorce that's caused by pornography and the increase in infidelity in marriage, as part of the public health crisis. There's the sexual violence crisis. We have a crisis in our military and we have a crisis on our campuses with sexual assaults in those areas. They consider that part of the public health crisis. They also consider other kinds of crimes that are hooked to the use of pornography. Not just rape but also the prostituting of women and the sex trafficking of children have been shown to be connected to the use of pornography.
So they consider a public health crisis broadly, with the definition that it can't be solved by an individual. It affects many of the people in the culture. It has broad effects, and these are all considered effects—the divorce rate, the impact on prostituted women and prostituted children, and the physical health effect. We've tried to pursue a number of solutions. The public health crisis is one of them. We've also tried to consider age verification online as a place to do blocking. They're also considering that in the U.K., trying to get Internet service providers to have opt-in policies so that they won't send pornography unless you opt in, and trying to get the companies involved in that as a stopgap step.