Even baking cookies can be illegal activity

People are illegal by virtue of immigration laws. Drugs are illegal by virtue of drug laws. Money is illegal by virtue of legal tender laws. Trans fat is illegal by virtue of trans fat laws. Pay is illegal by virtue of minimum wage laws.

Well, now cookies are illegal by virtue of bake sale laws.

Individuals have been baking cookies for centuries to raise money, voluntarily, without the use of force from government, to operate their favorite activities from ball games to charities.

Some very nice ladies in Maricopa County have been baking rum balls, gingerbread cookies and other treats for years in order to continue to support the F.Q. Story Historic District in Phoenix.

To preserve homes built in the 1920s with a variety of architectural styles helps individuals learn a bit about history. It takes money, though, as most activities do, to maintain the district. A great way to raise the necessary funds to preserve the district is to sell cookies baked by individuals using their valuable time and their own resources.

However, Maricopa County health inspectors confiscated the cookies baked by the ladies involved in helping to preserve the district, telling them they were not compliant with the law because cookies for sale must be baked in a professional kitchen as opposed to a home kitchen.

The inspectors nearly required the ladies to dump all of their hard work last year.

This year due to the enforcement of the "cookie law," the cookie bakers had to go to a gigantic professional catering company's facilities to bake this year's cookies. Personal Touch Catering in east Phoenix allowed the ladies to use their ovens for free.

In other words the cost due to the decision of government officials enforcing government law is borne by the company and in the end will be borne by the district if the professional caterer cannot offer the service in the future, which will in turn have a negative impact in preserving the historic district.

Food safety is no laughing matter. No one wants individuals to get sick or even die from eating contaminated food. However, the responsibility of deciding what is contaminated and what is not rests with the individual or individuals involved, not a government official.

A free society allows the individual to make the necessary decisions in his or her life about what they ingest. The government official's responsibility is only to arrest, cite or fine an individual if the individual is forcing another to buy the cookies in the first place.

The Maricopa County Environmental Health Division has not had reports of illnesses due to the bake sales.

There is a risk in every endeavor a human being undertakes. However, those risks have to be weighed against the costs. The people who are in the best position to decide those risks and costs are the individuals involved, not a government official who is not involved in the daily process.

Laws that control the behavior of individuals that do not harm to anyone in their decision-making and where no force is used are bad laws. The fact that the possibility of harm exists matters not because every decision that an individual makes has the possibility of harming someone.

More government laws and regulations increase the number of criminals and thereby increase the cost of government, resulting in increased taxation. That limits the ability of the individual to decide how his income is to be spent.

As a result, more individuals become frustrated and begin to strike out against their fellow man, increasing the number of real criminals.

The natural tendency of a do-gooder law like this is for it to become overzealous and extreme and soon society will find itself in a tyrannical straight jacket from which it is extremely difficult to escape. Individuals must watch what they ask for when they demand government do something about any situation.

A government official is not any more perfect than any other human being and has less of a capacity to evaluate particular situations then the individuals involved in those situations - such as the people doing the baking.

Government exists for one purpose, to make sure that individuals do not use force on one another to influence another's decision. Otherwise, individuals are free to choose whatever they want to ingest.

With the direction and speed in which government is moving it should not surprise anyone that besides immigrants, drugs, money, trans fat, smoking, drinking and a myriad of other activities, life itself could become illegal.

In other words, government law would dictate religion, ethnicity and speech among many other attributes of being human. The United States of America was created in order that that would not happen ever again.

--

Howard J. Blitz is a local libertarian and

president of The Freedom Library Inc.,

2435 S. 8th Ave. His e-mail address is

info@freedomlibrary.org